


Redundant

by theoddlittleturtle



Series: Damn it. Again? [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, Military, Multi, Romance, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-04-03
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:17:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 68
Words: 153,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoddlittleturtle/pseuds/theoddlittleturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saren? Geth Attacks? The total annihilation of all organic life? Pffsh. Don't worry! Rich Achievement Unlocked! </p>
<p>Emphasizes side quests, hard science, technobabble, & military jargon with a side of Shenko & a helping of squad mate banter. Action, humor, flirting, drama, & brushes with death.  </p>
<p>Now with 100% more rampaging dinosaurs! (I regret nothing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Space is a cold bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Summary:** Saren? Geth? The total annihilation of all organic life? Pfffsh. Don't worry! Rich Achievement Unlocked! Mass Effect emphasizing side quests, technobabble,  & military jargon with a side of Shenko. Action, humor, flirting, turnips, Love Sucks, & brushes with death. Ensemble POVs and multiple pairings.
> 
> **Rating:** Mature! Horn-dogs, lewd jokes, crude language, black comedy, graphic violence, snark, Love Sucks, rocks fall and people die horrible deaths, rabid plot varrens, turnips, socks!
> 
> **Spoilers:** If you saw/heard it in ME1 or ME2 or read it in the books, it's here, too, but with added flavors and preservatives. If these things don't appeal to you, Turn Back Now! (The only book!canon not currently explored is Deception, since the tech doesn’t match the universe anyway.) ME3 canon will eventually make its way into this story.
> 
> Clothing optional. Wash, rinse, repeat. Void where prohibited.
> 
> Enjoy the ride.

"Only when he's talking to you, Joker."

Because of his marine and biotic training and his eleven-year service in the Systems Alliance Military, Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko never questioned his superior's orders—out loud.

Questions got good men killed. He'd never lost anyone under his command, and he wasn't about to start because he hesitated by questioning a superior. Although he wasn't big on formality and protocol, he did do things by the book—or as close to the book as he could and still leave a way out. He'd learned the hard way what cutting corners did.

And Regs were in place for a _reason_.

The result: Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko always crossed his T's, dotted his I's, and minded his P's and Q's, and he was damned good at what he did.

However, for the life of him, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, good soldier that he was, couldn't figure out why he couldn't take his eyes off his executive officer's ass as she made her way off the bridge of the _SSV Normandy,_ across the gangway, and through CIC to the Comm Room where the Captain was waiting for her.

He tried to justify it as curiosity. She did have the whole mysterious stranger appeal going for her. All Kaidan had known about her prior to serving with her aboard the _Normandy_ was gleaned from extranet news reports and scuttlebutt. He didn't trust scuttlebutt any more than he trusted the news, so that, in his book, made Lieutenant Commander Shepard one mysterious woman.

He was curious. That was _it_. _Curiosity._ Nothing more.

_Nothing._

Well…

Her ass was cute encased as it was in the dark gray Aldrin Labs' Onyx armor. Her curves just beckoned his eyes to follow them. It made his mouth dry and heart race just taking her figure in as she stopped to speak briefly with Navigator Pressly.

Curiosity.

It wasn't like he was breaking any regulations. Nowhere in the giant book of rules that made up the Systems Alliance bureaucracy did it specifically state, "Thou shalt not stare at another's bum—particularly if the other's bum happens to be thy XO." It did say that fraternization between ranks while on the same cruise was prohibited, though it was left up to the ship's captain as to disciplinary action.

On his last cruise, one couple had been forced to separate to different ships because they had been too open about their relationship. They had been a cute couple. Too mushy and kissy-face for Kaidan, but nonetheless, it was nice to see the two kids in love. The wedding on Amaterasu was in two weeks, and Kaidan was looking forward to shore leave to attend; he'd received the vid-mail invitation a few days before his transfer from the _SSV Kilimanjaro_ to the _SSV_ _Normandy_ was official.

As Commander Shepard disappeared around the bulkhead, Kaidan allowed his attention to come back to what he was assigned to do: Monitor the kinetic fields and the heat sinks in sector seven, eight and nine.

The pilot sitting next to him only snorted at him, as his nimble fingers traveled across the amber haptic adaptive interface as he, per the Captain's orders, linked the ship's communications systems into a nearby comm buoy. Luckily, Kaidan had already caught Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau studying Shepard's posterior.

"Told you she had a cute ass," Joker said cracking a wicked smile, his white teeth a contrast to his bearded face. The pilot leaned back in his chair and threaded his fingers together against the Alliance-issue cap on top of his head.

Kaidan rolled his eyes and scowled at the screen before him, barely seeing the series of logarithms as they scrolled past. So it was Joker's fault he couldn't take his eyes off Shepard's ass.

To his dismay, Joker continued on, "At least you weren't ogling her tits this time."

Dark eyes piercing the distance between them, Kaidan defended himself. "For the final time, I wasn't ogling her. I was noticing the N7 on her breastplate. There's a score mark there." He sighed as Joker cackled. He didn't have to defend himself against Moreau.

_Curiosity._

Studying his XO was _not_ fraternization. Hell, Kaidan wasn't even sure if Shepard knew he existed other than the formal greeting the crew had been forced to give when she came on board a few days ago from Piazzi Station—one of two major military installations at Earth's L5 Lagrange point.

When the _Normandy_ had left Dry Dock with a skeleton crew, they were supposed to pick up the Commander at Arcturus Station with the rest of the thirty-one other crew members, but due to unforeseen circumstances—namely a batarian terrorist attack on their most densely populated colony, Terra Nova—the procedure had changed. She and her team of Ns had diverted an asteroid from its collision course with the planet's capital city. The press corps had held her up for days, and Fifth Fleet COM finally had to transfer her to Piazzi Station to keep the overeager press from Arcturus at bay. When Shepard had boarded the _Normandy_ in the cargo hold several days later, the entire crew was at attention, even Joker, legs locked in braces to the mid-thigh and the pads of his crutches wrapped around his upper arms, all standing eager to meet the Sole Survivor of Akuze and Savior of Terra Nova.

Commander Shepard was taller and more delicate-looking than Kaidan had expected. But then again, Kaidan had only really seen her through the extranet news. The dark gray of her Onyx armor coupled with the darkness of her layered brown hair had heightened the translucence of her well-modeled and feminine face as Captain Anderson formally introduced the crew to its celebrity XO.

Kaidan did admit that he had been staring at her armored chest when they had exchanged a salute, and it had been an incredible effort on his part to draw his eyes up away from the scored N7 decal to meet her expressive brown ones. What he had seen in her face and eyes had caught him off guard more than the N7 rating. The odd color was neither brown nor green, but resembled copper that was gradually oxidizing. A scar sliced her right eye brow in half and briefly touched the delicate skin under eye. The skin under her left eye was a small puckered line.

Shepard's scarred dark eyebrow had lifted slightly when he hesitated, as Kaidan took in the extraordinary color of her eyes, her chopped brown locks, her smooth creamy complexion, the scar on her plush upper lip, surprise clearly written across his face. Up close, his XO was a lot younger-looking than he had expected to find after all she had been through.

When he'd managed to find his voice, he said something stupid like, "It's an honor to serve you, ma'am." Kaidan inwardly winced as the memory flittered about his brain but focused on running a check on sector eight anyway as the shielding flickered from interception with debris.

Not only did she probably think he was an idiot, but a pervert too. Okay, the armor left very little to the imagination…but…an N _7_? Kaidan had served with Ns before, but never an N with the experience level of seven. And here he was serving with more than just one. Having Captain Anderson, the most decorated officer in the fleet, was just as overwhelming as having the Sole Survivor of Akuze.

The Alliance really pulled out all the stops to bend over backwards for a Council seat. To Kaidan, the presence of the turian Spectre, Nihlus Kryik, only confirmed what he believed to be humanity begging for a seat at the adult's table, but no one asked his opinion, and he sure as hell wasn't going to give it. The crew was just being paranoid that this was a covert mission of some sort.

"Yeah, well, that's the official story," Joker said in reply to Kaidan's denial of XO tit ogling. "Y'know—" The comm channel squawked suddenly, and Joker flicked a finger to reply to it. He gasped and paled considerably when a fuzzy transmission came through. "Oh. _Shit_."

Kaidan stretched his neck to get a look at what had gotten the normally cool and collected pilot's panties in a bunch.

"Holy Hell," he breathed as they watched, with mouths open and stomachs protesting, the decimation of a platoon of fifty Marines in the time it took Joker to relay the transmission to the Captain in the Comm Room…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> **Codex**  
> 
> 
> **Humanity and the Systems Alliance: Locations: Stations: Piazzi Station**
> 
>  
> 
> **Piazzi Station** is the first of two major military installations constructed at Earth’s L5 Lagrange point. A 2.9-kilometer diameter “Stanford Torus”-type space station, its design later influenced the larger Arcturus Station. Originally sponsored solely by the United Kingdom, after construction began in 2149, it was sold to the Systems Alliance after the discovery of the Sol's mass effect relay. Construction concluded in 2156. The Systems Alliance used the station as its military and political headquarters from its inauguration in 2153 until the First Contact War.
> 
> Piazzi was constructed using materials from the moon and metallic asteroids imported from the belt separating the Sol system’s “inner” and “outer” planets. Six of these asteroids remain near the station today and serve as recreational facilities and habitats to transients. Piazzi hosts a permanent population of 31,000.
> 
> Mostly administrative offices with a few agricultural areas, Piazzi is also home to the Piazzi Campus of the Systems Alliance Naval Academy. Many Systems Alliance engineers are graduates of the Piazzi Campus.
> 
> Hollywood actress and extreme stunt and swordsperson Cara Bueno was born on Piazzi in 2160. A recreational facility and dojo on Six, the largest of the hollowed-out asteroids, is named Bueno Swords Dining and Dojo in her honor.
> 
>  
> 
> _**Trivia/Geekery:** Piazzi Station takes its name from Giuseppe Piazzi—astronomer, mathematician, and also a Catholic priest. Among other things, he discovered Ceres and oversaw the compilation of the Palermo Catalogue of Stars. Cara Bueno is a randomly generated "American" name from fakenamegenerator dot com._


	2. Gas Bags

When Kaidan hit the ground on Eden Prime, the last thing he expected was for Commander Shepard, an N7 Shock Trooper, to yank off her helmet as they took cover against a boulder. He didn't understand, but he didn't question it either. He wanted to believe it was because he was a good soldier, but a little voice in the back of his mind whispered that it was because he wanted to see her coppery-colored eyes again. He inwardly winced. Hearing whispering voices in his head was not a great way to phrase it. He hadn't gotten the crazy; he'd gotten a lesser side effect to being biotic: Migraines.

"Shepard, clear," she confirmed when she hadn't seen anything that would kill or eat them. He and Corporal Richard Jenkins followed suit and gathered around as she threw her helmet down and unclipped her shotgun.

"Commander?" Jenkins inquired just as surprised as Kaidan as both men unclipped their own preferred weapons—Jenkins, his assault rifle; Kaidan, his pistol.

"Tossing your cookies in your helmet isn't a fun thing to do," she told him with a shrug, standing and having a better look at the surroundings, watching with her odd-colored eyes as the _Normandy_ left the atmosphere.

The first thing Shepard had noticed about Eden Prime was the smell: smoke and cooked flesh. It was the type of smell that went straight to her brain and hung out around her implant. She wanted to gag, so she prepared herself for such an event. The helmet must go. She'd smelled the same thing on other missions, and it would never be a smell she associated as adherently _good_. Cooked flesh, no matter whose it was, was never a good thing. Even the enemy's cooking flesh smelled ungodly. She blinked back the smoke that hung in the air, tried to get a sense of the area.

_Only the three of us. Let's hope there's not too much resistance._

"Should I take off my helmet?" Jenkins asked, drawing her attention to his pale blue eyes. Jenkins' demeanor had changed since she'd spoken with him earlier. He was much more subdued, looking as though he'd aged ten years under the harsh light of Eden Prime's sun, Utopia. Having no intention of bringing up the Corporal's family, she gave each man a hard look before stating, "You heard the Captain; we're here for the beacon. We stay focused; we stay alive."

She was not losing another unit. She would do better this time.

"Aye, aye, Commander," Jenkins said without hesitation, his face grimly determined. "If—if there are survivors," he began and gulped.

Shepard's face softened. "I'll do everything in my power to keep them safe, and I expect you to do the same," she affirmed, and Kaidan's eyebrows shot up, "but that's still secondary. If that thing holds information about a weapon—possibly the same weapon that wiped out the Protheans—then everything this colony stands for is a moot point."

Jenkins nodded. "Understood, ma'am."

"Move out, Marines," she ordered, striding away.

Kaidan was stunned as he watched her, her hips swaying. She got the job done, and she was diplomatic about it. _Wow._ As much as he was appreciating her figure, he shook himself and trotted to catch up with them. He followed closely behind Jenkins as they rounded a clearing and stopped by a boulder. Using the boulder as cover, Shepard peered around.

"Oh, God," Jenkins breathed as his gaze fell beyond the boulder. A charred body lay along the path. He closed his eyes. "What happened here?"

The path led past a lake and up over a rocky outcropping. Burned trees sprouted from the ground. Beyond that Kaidan could see a tall skyscraper burning in the distance. The statistics floated in his head. The colony was made up of over three million people—people who lived in the buildings overlooking their crops. He wondered about the casualties. It hadn't taken whatever it was very long to wipe out a unit of trained soldiers. His throat constricted. _Civilians._ They were going to find a lot of dead civilians. It wasn't right. Marines were trained to fight and die. Not civilians.

"You feeling ill, Corporal?" she asked, and Kaidan wished she had asked him instead, because, yeah, he was feeling ill. And a migraine was not something he needed right now.

"The smell will take some getting used to, ma'am," Jenkins answered after a moment. Kaidan felt sorry for the Corporal. This was his home world. He hoped they wouldn't run into any of the kid's family members. "It used to be so peaceful here."

Kaidan shook his head. "Smells like smoke and death."

Shepard nodded, was silent a moment.

Kaidan was going to say something more but at that instant Shepard turned around and froze, her eyes wide, her mouth forming an o, staring at whatever was behind him. He sucked in a breath as something brushed up against his back, nudging him slightly. In a fluid motion, Shepard regained control of herself and unclipped her pistol, fired a shot. Whatever was there exploded with a foul slurpy pop sending green goo flying everywhere.

"Damn!" he shouted, belatedly throwing himself to the ground. The smoky charred stench of Eden Prime was overpowered by the smell of what Kaidan reminded him of rotten turnips.

Nothing was worse than turnips. Not shit. Not smoke. Not burnt hair. Not even charred skin. As far as Kaidan was concerned turnips were the bane of humanity. Especially cooked. Being rotten made them that much worse. His mother had once brought him turnips on one of her many visits to make sure he wasn't going to stay single forever _("Kaidan, honey, don't you think it's time for you to settle down with a nice girl? You aren't into men are you? Here, eat these. They'll make you more virile."_ ), and, being the loving son he was, had taken them to please her and had forgotten all about them. After a two month cruise, he'd returned to base to find the rancid container in his refrigeration unit. Since then, he hadn't even been able to be in the same room when his mother cooked them ( _"But, sweetie, I thought you loved turnips. They make you so virile. Are you sure you're not into men?"_ ).

Kaidan was picking himself off the ground and shaking off the memory (and the foul smelling goo) when Shepard demanded, "What the hell was that?"

"Just a gas bag, ma'am," Jenkins said in reply. "They're harmless. We used to have one as a pet. We called him Bob."

"Did I just kill someone's equivalent of a dog?" Shepard asked, going a little pale.

The Corporal shook his head. "No, ma'am. Not this far out anyway."

Shepard nodded, wrinkled her nose at Kaidan. "That reeks." She stood and holstered her pistol and brought her shotgun back up to bare. "Sorry, Lieutenant." She listened intently as Nihlus' voice sounded over their comms and told them that he was scouting out ahead, but Kaidan didn't pay much attention. He didn't think she sounded all that sorry. She wasn't the one whose backside was covered in foul-smelling green goo.

"Good thing you were wearing your hard suit, Lieutenant," Jenkins told him as Shepard signaled them to move again. "If that stuff got on your clothes, skin or hair, you'd stink for a week."

_Terrific._

Kaidan shook his head and shuddered. There was no way in hell that he was going on another mission with armor that smelled like rotten turnips. Just as soon as he got back to the ship he was going to put in an order with the Requisitions Officer. Burns owed him a favor anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Codex**
> 
> **Aliens: Non-sapient Creatures: Gas Bags**
> 
> Prior to the discovery of the Prothean ruins and the Eden Prime War, the garden world of Eden Prime was known for two things: the hybridization of the Eden Prime Turnip and the benign Gas Bags.
> 
> Gas bags, the colloquial name for velolepis spiritalitas, are omnivorous, floating, lophotrichous creatures native to the planet of Eden Prime. The creatures have a number of protuberant gas-filled growths on their backs and heads. They have long hind legs with two toes each, shorter fore legs with four toes each, and four rear tendrils that resemble bacterial flagella in function. Gas bas travel by means of propelling themselves using the four rear tendrils via lophotichous locomotion. The creatures can grow to the size of a fully-grown adult human, and they have a short breeding cycle.
> 
> They are harmless to humans, though are thought to be carriers of a parasite called the Eden Prime Tick, which carries a harmful bacterium with no known vaccine. Once contracted, Eden Prime Tick Disease is easily treated with a round of antibiotics; however it has proven fatal in infants and the elderly.
> 
> _**Trivia/Geekery: velolepis** is the result of my terrible language skills and an online English-Latin dictionary. **Velo** is from **velum** , meaning "to sail or sailing" and **lepis** meaning "hare or rabbit"; **ventulus** meaning “soft wind”. No, I don't know what I was thinking, except "sailing rabbit on a soft wind" sounded like a good thing at the time, lol that's funny because they don't look anything like rabbits, and HULK WORD SMASH. Word-nerds, I'm so sorry. ;_;_


	3. Salute Anything You Can't Eat or Kill

Kaidan decided right off that he liked Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. She was a good soldier. She followed orders, was observant, didn't mind dirt—or the fact that his armor smelled like rotten turnips _("So what space loogie ran into you, L.T.?" "Gas bag, Chief." "Yeah, those things are gross when they pop, like spinach gone bad or something.")_ —and could snipe geth at 600 meters.

She was also cute, smart and had a wicked sense of humor. It was that sense of humor that she held onto even in the face of adversity. He knew it couldn't have been easy to see her unit wiped out before her eyes. Hell, he had been privy to the massacre, and it hadn't been easy for him. But the young woman had proved to be a valuable asset to their team on Eden Prime. She was strong—a survivor. Like Shepard.

But Shepard was in the infirmary. The Commander had been in the infirmary for six hours since the exploding Prothean beacon had knocked her out cold—with no word on when she would wake up. All Kaidan could do was complete his mission report and finish his daily duties—and wait patiently like the rest of crew. Everyone was on edge about Jenkins' loss. Some even were superstitious about it. There was a lower deck rumor started that if you went with Shepard, you were going to get killed. He, the Chief and Joker had immediately jumped on that one, making sure everyone knew that Jenkins' death was not the Commander's fault. They had no idea they were going up against the geth. They had no Intel, and Jenkins' shields hadn't been up to snuff.

Kaidan shook off the memory of the kid's lifeless eyes staring back at him, and decided that the first thing he was going to do when his ground crew leader woke up was apologize to her. Like a FNG, he had inadvertently triggered something on the beacon, and Shepard had saved him by taking on whatever the beacon had thrown at her before it overloaded. He took full responsibility for the fuck up.

The green light of the beacon that had engulfed him still made him jumpy. Wanting to satisfy his curiosity about the Protheans, he had gotten too close. Now things loomed in his peripheral vision, made the hair on the back of his neck rise. If he turned his head, they weren't there. He hadn't slept yet, but knew that once he did, there would probably be nightmares. So, all he could do was to wait it out and crash when his body no longer could stay awake.

 _Migraines._ He had migraines from his L2 implant. He was not going crazy. He was human, damn it. It wasn't a side effect. It wasn't brain damage. It wasn't anything he should worry about.

_Please, let this not be a side effect after sixteen years of having the damn thing._

So he occupied his time by running diagnostics on every panel that wasn't manned; exercising; playing a few rounds of Rook with Joker, 2nd Lieutenant Patterson, and Chief Williams while trading dirty jokes; cleaning his guns; eating a few times; doing his laundry; and ditching his turnip-infused Onyx armor and buying Scorpion light armor from Burns in the cargo hold. Without anything else to do he made his way back to the mess and had another helping of what constituted as a healthy meal. Naturally, it had no taste. And now he was stuck making small talk with Chief Williams as he forced down his sixth meal of the day.

The only thing that bothered him about the Chief was her ability to find him while he was eating. This was the third time since they'd been on board together that she'd zeroed in on him with his mouth full. He didn't like crowds; he didn't like lights; and he sure as hell didn't like anyone talking to him while he was stuffing his face. He couldn't stand the thought of anyone watching him chew. But the Chief didn't know that. And Kaidan couldn't bring himself to tell her to go to hell—and it wasn't because his mouth was full of Marine rations either. She seemed uncomfortable around the other members of the crew for some reason. He surmised that she was disoriented from watching her buddies get slaughtered, so he didn't press the subject.

"So, any idea what's going to happen now?" she asked just as he took another bite. It never failed. He glowered at her as he chewed, feeling his face heat up. She only looked at him, waited patiently for him to finish. He wondered if she did it on purpose just to see how many buttons she could press with him.

After he swallowed, he told her, "No clue, Chief. Has the Captain said anything about you staying on with us?"

"Stay?" She blinked, surprised. Suddenly, the table seemed to interest her more than his face, so he took the opportunity to shovel more food in his mouth. "I'm just a ground-pounder, Lieutenant. What could I possibly offer the _Normandy_?" That wasn't the answer he had expected. She seemed sure of herself most of the time, and in the field she definitely knew what she was doing. He chewed quickly as he thought of something to tell her.

"We lost Jenkins," he pointed out as he remembered the geth drones cutting the kid down before he could even get his weapon up. The memory was still fresh and hurt more than it should have, so Kaidan trudged ahead, "He wasn't a NonCom, but he was well on his way. Shepard and I wouldn't have been able to handle everything that got thrown at us, if it wasn't for you. Hell, if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have spotted those charges in time."

Down on the surface, Williams had been the first off the train and on to the platform at the space port. As Kaidan and Shepard had disembarked, a geth rocket trooper had fired a rocket at their heads. They had been too busy seeking cover to even think about looking for demolition charges. Just one of the charges was enough to nuke the spaceport, but the four of them would have set off a chain reaction that would have demolished the colony itself.

"Thanks, L.T., but I'm not going to get my hopes up," she told him, meeting his eyes with an expression he couldn't place, "I'll see where the wind takes me—or personnel command anyway."

He shrugged. "Just the same, I recommended you for the ground team. I'm surprised the Captain hasn't—"

As Kaidan spoke, Captain David Anderson strode from his office with a purpose and stopped before them in the mess. Both Marines sprang to their feet at the sight of him. He wasted no time in pleasantries, looking at both of them with a stern expression.

"Williams." His voice was anything but soft. "I've put in for your transfer to the Fifth Fleet, as fire team rifleman of the _Normandy_. With Jenkins gone, we'll need someone of your caliber to fill the role. I'm still waiting for the paperwork to process, but we've got the go ahead from Fleet Command." He allowed a small smile. "Welcome aboard."

Williams blinked, then saluted. "Thank you, sir. Glad to be aboard, sir."

"Your first shift starts tomorrow," Anderson asserted in a more conversational tone. "Alenko can introduce you to the CMC for your schedule and your duties on board. You're assigned to B Watch." His gaze fell on Kaidan. "When's the last time you slept, Lieutenant?"

"About twelve hours ago, sir."

"Finish your meal, introduce Williams to Chief Vassiliadis, and then get some rest," Anderson ordered. "We'll be running maneuvers in six hours. I want you on the bridge with Joker and Hendricks. If Shepard isn't awake by then, check in with Pressly for mission objectives."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Six hours later, Kaidan was rested, dressed and reporting to the infirmary with a bitch of a migraine.

_Joy._

Anderson was there speaking with Dr. Chakwas. They both looked up from their conversation as the infirmary door swooshed open. The Commander lay on one of the medical beds, a thin sheet covering her, her pale arms and shoulders exposed. Though his brain was fuzzy, Kaidan still managed to think she looked so vulnerable lying there.

After that it was a blur of pain and of too many lights and of too much noise. It didn't help that the infirmary smelled like antiseptic and meds. He was sure the Captain had asked him something but couldn't make out the words. He was also sure the doctor had said something, but that, too, wasn't anything his brain could process. The cloudy searing pain didn't go away and things danced menacingly in his peripheral vision as lights flashed behind his eyes. Metal things, evil things. Things that stayed on the edge of his vision. Things that shouldn't be there. He turned his head too fast and ended up stumbling. It was a sea of vertigo and nausea before he blacked out on the cold floor.

When he woke up again the pain had receded to a dull ache at the back of his skull. Putting a hand to his forehead, he blinked at the ceiling. His eyes traced the random pattern of the gray metal as he went over his own systems check.

_Head: Throbbing.  
Shoulders: Doing fine.  
Ribs: Bruised, but healing.  
Feet: Everything accounted for.  
Knees: A-Okay.  
Mr. Happy and his magical friends: Check. At ease, soldier._

Everything seemed to be in working order. He was in one of the medical beds—in his underwear. A thin sheet covered him, but he still felt… exposed.

"Well, I see you finally decided to join the land of the living," Dr. Chakwas remarked as she leaned over him to flip a switch on the machine near his head. Whether she turned it on or off, he wasn't sure. He didn't care either way. Her blue eyes rested on his chest a moment longer than he felt necessary, but he said nothing about it. All doctors made him uncomfortable anyway. "How are you feeling, Kaidan?" she asked.

"Like the morning after shore leave," he replied groggily. Sitting up, he watched her face split into two and dance around before coming back together into one person. The double vision left him feeling nauseated.

So his stomach growled loudly. He put his head in his hands with a grunt.

"You've been in and out for nearly three hours," she explained, her lips twitching into a smile. "The last time you woke up, you said you were the turnip king before you passed out again from what I assume was from pain. Private Lu has been sworn to secrecy, but she's still a little uncertain as to whether to report you as a brain damaged biotic. You're certainly not a light sleeper and were still dreaming at the time, so I handled it."

Kaidan's face burned. "Any, ah, anything else, doctor?" he questioned, trying to but failing at hiding his embarrassment.

"Your blood sugar is abnormally low," the doctor rebuked him. "You'll be pulled from active duty if you don't correct it."

He started, his head jerked up to meet her eyes. "It's that bad?"

She handed him a pile of clothes and a pair of boots with a smile. "Of course not. Just a doctor's joke."

Kaidan didn't find anything funny about it. He frowned.

"Get dressed," Chakwas told him. "Get some nourishment. You must have overtaxed your biotics on Eden Prime. Coupled with stress, the implant flared up a bit. Nothing to get your knickers in a twist about. Nine hundred calories should do it."

Kaidan dressed quickly, wincing when he moved too fast to throw his shirt on over his head. A husk's electrical charge had penetrated his shields and armor knocking him back into a crate. His military-issue genetic enhancements, medi-gel from the Commander, and later medical treatment from Dr. Chakwas had kept it from becoming anything more than a slight pain, but it still hurt nonetheless. When he glanced up, his face turned red—again. The doctor had watched him dress, her face a mask of neutrality.

"How are your ribs?" she inquired.

He shrugged. "Aches and pains, but that's it. I'm fine, doc." He finished fastening his boots and walked over to Shepard's bed. She looked vulnerable laying there, her short hair akimbo, her pale skin an ashy hue under the artificial light. Guilt overtook his heart. This wasn't right. Kaidan wanted to be the one laying there. It was his stupidity, not hers. "How's she doing?"

"She's been out for fifteen hours, but she's stable," the doctor said vaguely from her desk where she was adding notes to Kaidan's chart.

He opened his mouth to ask another question as he looked over the Commander's sleeping form, but when she twitched, he clamped his mouth shut. Her eyes fluttered open, and Kaidan's breath caught in his throat as relief flooded through him. Flecks of green reflected in her copper eyes. _Thank God._

"Doctor?" Kaidan turned his head. "Doctor Chakwas, I think she's waking up." He stepped back to give the Commander some room. Because he didn't want to crowd her. Not because seeing her curves through the sheet made his pulse race. It surprised him when she sat up and swung her legs over and out from under the thin sheet, holding the sheet to her chest and a hand to her head.

The chilliness of the room did nothing to ward off the sudden spike in Kaidan's temperature. She had her back to him, but it was bare. His dark eyes explored the expanse of her skin. She was like a porcelain doll. Only the occasional bruise or scar marred the creamy complexion. Her shoulders were hunched as she got her bearings straight, as she listened to the doctor. His fingers itched to reach out and touch her. So he crossed his arms at his chest lest he do something embarrassing. His mind went into overdrive.

She was nude. The sheet only covered her front and bunched up at her ass. But she had no clothes on. No clothes. His mouth went dry and his belly did an odd little flip.

And Dr. Chakwas was looking at him for an explanation. It took all of his concentration to force himself to remember what was said. Chakwas was explaining what happened. Why she was naked? Nope. The beacon? That's right! What the hell was wrong with him?

"It's my fault," he blurted, hoping that he was on the right course of action, and, if the doctor's expression was anything to go by, he chose correctly. This was his executive officer. He couldn't be having unprofessional thoughts about a woman with whom he was serving for the next two months. "I must have triggered some kind of security field when I approached it. You had to push me out of the way."

She looked at him from over her shoulder, shook her head. "You had no idea what would happen."

So she wasn't angry. She was safe, secure, and didn't blame him. And naked, his brain supplied happily. He inwardly shook it off as he smiled a small smile of relief. Shepard returned it before Chakwas started speaking again. He thought his knees might buckle at the way Shepard's lips had tilted up.

"Actually, we don't know if that's what set it off," the doctor said with a shake of her head. "Unfortunately, we'll never get the chance to find out."

Shepard looked at him for confirmation, her eyes were dark, searching, and he nodded. "The beacon exploded," he explained, crossing to stand in front of her, looking into her eyes and not her exposed shoulders or her legs as they dangled off the table. "System overload maybe." He shrugged. "The blast knocked you cold. Williams and I had to carry you back her to the ship."

"I appreciate it," she told him. He nodded _(No, problem.)_ ,and she rubbed her eyes again.

The doctor retrieved Shepard's clothing, and Kaidan averted his attention so she could dress.

"Physically you're fine," the doctor told her as Shepard dressed, the rustle of fabric itching on Kaidan's ears, "but I detected some unusual brain activity." Kaidan started at that and looked at Chakwas sharply. "Abnormal beta waves. I also noticed an increase in your rapid eye movement. Signs typically associated with intense dreaming."

Shepard's voice sounded unsure. Her tone made Kaidan turn around to look at her. She was dressed in standard fatigues sans her boots as she leaned back against the medical bed, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge. "I saw—" she breathed a deep breath, expelled it shakily. "I'm not really sure what I saw." She gave a shrug. Her eyes were unfocused on the opposite wall. "Death. Destruction. Nothing's really clear." She didn't look at him or the doctor.

The doctor studied her thoughtfully. "Hm. I may add this to my report. It may—" At that moment, the infirmary door opened and Anderson strode in. "Oh, Captain Anderson."

Kaidan straightened as well as Shepard, but then she sagged back against the table. Anderson glanced at him and then Chakwas. "How's our XO holding up, doctor?" If he had a problem with Kaidan being there or was wondering how he was after the migraine, the Captain said nothing.

"All the readings look normal," Chakwas reported. "I'd say the Commander's going to be fine."

Kaidan let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding as Shepard's eyes traveled from the floor to his face, perusing his frame as they went along. She held his gaze a moment. His stomach did a pitch and roll.

"Shepard, I need to speak with you," Anderson announced. "In private."

Kaidan immediately saluted, suddenly glad to have an excuse to leave. What the hell was wrong with him? He was acting totally out of character. Was he going crazy? "I'll be in the mess if you need me." Oh, yeah. Crazy as a loon.

He all but ran out of the room and headed for the galley. Nine hundred calories. Right. He grabbed some rations and an energy drink and made his way back to the mess. Williams was already there, a tray of food in front of her. Kaidan almost chose a chair away from her, but decided that it would be rude.

"You okay?" she asked as he put his tray down on the table at the next seat over. She looked worried. "Joker said you hurt your head or something."

He hefted a brow. "He said that, huh?"

"Well, he said your head hurt," she rephrased as he sat. "I figured you banged your head on the bulkhead or something." When he looked at her curiously, her cheeks colored up. "You know," she stammered, "from fixing the electronics or something."

He only nodded, said nothing a minute. As he looked down at his tray he suddenly didn't feel all that hungry. "Migraine," he told her quietly. "Side effect from the implant."

"Sorry. You want to talk about it?"

"Nope."

They ate in silence until Shepard rounded the bulkhead with a tray of food.

"Glad to see you're okay, Commander," Kaidan told her as she sat opposite of them. "Losing Jenkins was hard on the crew, and I'm glad we didn't lose you too."

Nodding, the Chief put in, "The crew could use some good news after what happened to him."

"Jenkins was a valuable part of this crew," the Commander said. She looked down, then back up meeting their expectant gazes. "I wish I could have done something more to save him." She put her elbow on the table and leaned on her hand, picking at her food despondently.

"Hey, I was there," Kaidan reminded her. "You did everything right, Commander." She looked up at him, her eyes awash in remorse. "It was just bad luck."

"Things were pretty rough down there," the Commander stated, took a sip of her energy drink.

Williams nodded. "I've lost friends before. Comes with being a Marine." She studied her hands. "But to see my whole unit wiped out…" She shook her head sadly. "And you never get used to seeing dead civilians."

"It doesn't seem right somehow," Alenko murmured with a nod. He pointed at Shepard with his spork. "But at least you stopped Saren from wiping out the whole colony."

His XO waved the sentiment away. "I couldn't have done it without you two."

"Thanks, Commander," the Chief told her, "that means a lot coming from you. I have to admit I was a little worried about being assigned to the _Normandy_. It's nice when someone makes you feel welcome."

"We're Marines, we stick together," he assured her.

"You're gonna fit in here just fine, Williams," Shepard intoned before returning to her food.

Kaidan studied her a moment, watching as she packed away the food at a fast pace, but had an overall femininity to her that he found alluring. He chewed carefully as he watched then averted his attention to the Chief, who had an impish grin on her face, and nearly spit out his food. Yeah. He knew that look. She had been hanging around Joker way too much.

"It's been a hell of shakedown cruise," he said in order to draw Williams' attention back to something more professional. "Our first mission ends with one Spectre killing another. The Citadel Council's not going be happy with that. Probably use it to leverage more concessions out of the Alliance."

Shepard cut him off by raising her hand. "Whatever's going on, the Captain can handle it."

"Absolutely, Commander," he agreed with a nod, a little disappointed that she didn't play politics. It would be interesting to see her views.

Again silence reigned as Shepard cleared her plate and drank her energy drink. Kaidan was about to excuse himself when she looked up. "Any advice on how to act in front of an ambassador?" she asked him. "I don't meet many politicians."

He blinked, surprised. "An ambassador?" What the hell was going on? "I'd just follow standard operating procedure," he advised as he stood. "Salute anything you can't eat or kill." He saluted her. "Good luck, ma'am."

Williams followed suit with a grin.

Shepard rolled her eyes and gave an unladylike snort. "That'll do, you two."


	4. In Case of Elevator, Break Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Naturally, even more liberties have been taken with the dialogue. ;p_

Shepard gritted her teeth to ward off the compulsion to punch Udina—or at the very least snap at the ambassador.

_Settle down my ass._

Politics or not, classified or not, Spectre or not, Saren would pay. They had to find something on him. Had to. The damned traitor had attacked a human colony for the prothean beacon. She was sure he was only after the beacon, but from what the Captain had told her, Saren held a bitter grudge against humanity, and he most likely had jumped at the chance to make humanity suffer. And the Council wasn't going to listen to them.

_Fan-fucking-tastic._

Like a naïve little brat back on Mindoir, she had hoped the Council would listen to reason. Like an enlisted man right out of boot camp, she thought perhaps the Captain could handle things. Well, look where naiveté had landed them.

_Absolutely nowhere. Chasing obscure leads. Should have paid more attention to Alenko._

The images from the beacon still swam in her mind's eye: Mechanical creatures tearing and shredding a strange group of people who seemed vaguely familiar, like she knew them from somewhere, anywhere. Blood ran on an unknown street, people screamed on an unknown planet, machines devils killed and implanted at an unknown time.

The future looked vague and shadowy with a healthy helping of dread. It terrified and angered her. She tried to mask her inner turmoil with a deceptive calmness as they walked past the fountain of the Citadel Tower. The look Alenko gave her let her know that she wasn't doing a very good job of disguising her inner demons.

"I like the fountain," he commented quietly, gesturing with a casual flick of his wrist. "It's very soothing." She agreed with a noncommittal sound as they continued on. It was an absurd thing to say after the Council had disagreed with the evidence that Saren was a traitor. Shepard wondered if it was his subtle way of telling her everything would be alright. She liked to think so. And, yes, after the events of the past few days—hell, the last hour alone was enough to kill her from stress—the fountain _was_ very soothing.

As they walked along, skirting around dignitaries, diplomats, ambassadors, and their aides, Shepard watched the Lieutenant out of the corner of her eye. Lines ringed his mouth and eyes, muting his youth with strength, but she didn't know the man well enough to be able to tell if the lines were from the stress of the past few days, the farce of a hearing or if his own mask of calm was beginning to crack. She wondered idly if he would talk to her about it. He kept to himself while on board the _Normandy_ , avoiding people unless absolutely necessary, but his actions in the field told her that he wasn't shy. He was a good Marine, honest and an excellent leader. And he was politically savvy. All the requisites for promotion. Maybe when they got back to the ship, she would ask around a little to find out more about him.

Williams had no compunction to control her inner turmoil or to restrain herself as the elevator door cycled shut. "I can't believe the council ignored all of the evidence against Saren," she blurted, crossing her arms over her formal uniform and leaning against the wall angrily.

Alenko joined her. "Saren's one of their best operatives," he pointed out calmly, and Shepard found herself watching his hands as he spoke. "It's only natural they'd take his word over ours."

"Oh, so now we just chase leads while that smug turian runs around with his geth troopers?" Williams smacked the airtight glass with the palms of her hands.

"That's politics, Chief," he told her. Shepard found herself nodding in agreement with Alenko without realizing it. He looked up, held her gaze a moment with his own dark one as the Chief sulked against the wall of the elevator, and Shepard's heart did a weird little flip-flop in response that both confused and irritated the hell out of her.

"I hate politics," Williams announced as she crossed her arms, irritation written in lines of frustration across her face. She gave a hearty sigh, and Alenko shrugged as if to say _that's the way things work_.

"You've got a good grasp of the situation, Lieutenant," Shepard remarked, pleased at how nonchalant she sounded, deciding against opining about the Council's judgment—or lack thereof. It was as good chance as any to get to know the man—especially if the universe decided that it was an excellent opportunity to throw another wrench at her. "You a career man?"

The lieutenant straightened, looking uncomfortable. It was… cute. "Yeah," he shrugged, "a lot of biotics are. We're not restricted, but we sure don't go undocumented. May as well get a paycheck for it. Besides," he added, "my father served. Made him proud when I enlisted. Eventually." He looked away bitterly before returning his gaze to hers. And that strange little current went through her again. "But is that why you're here? Because of your family?"

* * *

Ashley stopped sulking and looked up, her attention riveted on the Commander. She wanted to know more about the woman she felt was her savior. If Shepard and Alenko hadn't arrived on Eden Prime when they had, she felt sure that she would be with God now. Being skewered on a geth spike was not how she wanted to meet Him though. To be turned into one of those… those husks was not something— She didn't even want to think about it. Nothing could be worse.

"My family were homesteaders on Mindoir," Shepard told them quietly, watching as the floors zoomed past. She shrugged. "I'm the only one left. But I've moved beyond that."

Ashley paled. She had been wrong. Maybe there was something worse than being turned into a geth husk.

_The Raid._

When batarians attacked a human colony, Mindoir, and killed or captured everyone...

_She survived._

"And Akuze?" the Chief asked before she could stop herself.

The Commander only smiled sadly. "I've moved beyond that too." Her eyes took on a determined look. "I'll never forget them or the lessons they taught me."

* * *

Kaidan swallowed hard. "You're very good at surviving, ma'am."

Shepard only shrugged off the half-assed compliment. "Williams appears to be, too."

Not knowing what else to say, he nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

Mindoir. And Akuze. And a candidate for the Spectres. He had to give his brain a good shake in order to override his basic male nature to want—no, not want, but _need_ —to protect her.

"Don't worry, Lieutenant," Williams said with a mischievous smirk, seeming to pluck his thoughts right out of his head. "We'll protect you." … _Or not._

He blinked. Was she flirting with him? He gazed at her incredulously. Her grin widened.

To Kaidan's horror, the Commander threw her head back and laughed. "You're all right, Williams."


	5. When in Doubt, Add Ketchup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This came out more stream of consciousness than I had intended, so I hope there was more laughter than confusion. XD_
> 
> _Thank you, everyone who has read, left Kudos or comments. All my love, y'all._

They'd put in two long days of getting no where in their investigation when Commander Shepard announced that she was calling Eight Bells and going shopping.

Since the _Normandy_ was pretty much grounded until they found evidence against Saren, Kaidan shrugged and tagged along too. What harm would it do? It wasn't like they had found anything so far. He could use a few upgrades for his Kessler anyway.

As they walked around the markets, he thought back to their first day on the Citadel: a day that started off with a crap hearing and then dedicated to asking questions on the Presidium. He categorized the first day as uneventful—well, okay, maybe not. There was that hanar zealot and Shepard's futile attempts to get the jelly to leave the Presidium or buy a license to preach ( _Because it's a big, stupid jellyfish!)._ Oh, and the asari Consort draping herself all over Shepard, which might have been amusing if Kaidan hadn't been so damned uncomfortable.

Now that he had time to think about it, Kaidan wasn't sure what to make of the Consort. She had seemed genuinely distressed about her situation. Then the asari got into the Commander's personal space and... rubbed all over her.

And a random acolyte who happened by. And Williams, whose back instantly became ramrod straight. And Kaidan, who realized he was still flustered over it.

And Williams had been no help.

What. So. Ever.

"I'd heard asari were into this sort of thing," the Chief had whispered after the Consort had sashayed back to Shepard to… fondle the Commander again to make whatever case it was she was trying to make—Kaidan had lost track of what she was asking of Shepard when the blue alien woman had entered his personal space without his permission and had reached behind him and grabbed his ass.

Bug-eyed and embarrassed at her brazenness, it had taken all of his biotic training not to throw the asari across the room. He had stood there and had taken it like the trained soldier he was, compartmentalizing, ignoring her completely—well, almost. Shepard had remained passive, so he had tried his best not to give Consort a _friendly_ biotic push in the opposite direction, had thought about the way the Commander had stiffened when the blue alien woman had entered Kaidan's space, and decided right then that it would not be a good idea to imagine the Commander in the Consort's place. After the Consort had stepped away, he had wondered where that particular thought had come from, but thankfully-or not-Williams had spared his brain the effort of completing the thought process.

"What was that thing you said about an attitude and a big gun?" Williams had smirked impishly repeating an earlier phrase he had told her to encourage her to not be afraid of the situation. _Not funny, Williams._ Her impish smirk had turned into a full-blown grin at his discomfort and ever increasing flush by the time Shepard had had enough of the groping (of herself and her marines) and had agreed to help find some turian—or something.

After they had left the Consort's presence and her office, Shepard had visibly shuddered. "I've seen some shit in the Ns," she had told them looking as though she wanted to take a dip in the lake to wash off the Consort's cooties, "but I think that was probably the weirdest experience." Pausing, she had mulled it over, and nodding she had added, "ever." Then she had turned on her heel as though nothing had happened and headed for the bank to speak with the volus who ran it.

"I hear that," Williams had agreed. "Too bad the Lieutenant liked it."

To his mortified annoyance, Kaidan could only gape at her. How the hell was he supposed to defend himself against that remark? Was she his subordinate or an annoying little sister? What the hell?

Unfortunately, the bank had been closed for lunch ( _Open twenty-four-seven_ _my ass. Easy, Williams_ , _everybody's gotta eat_. _Dontcha think the volus need diets, Lieutenant? No, Chief. Yeah, but- Down, Chief. Aye, aye, sir._ ), but the open air café they had found was nice. Though, he was more in debt after eating there than he had been before lunch…

Now, on the second day, they had already nearly been blown up by a sentient computer ( _All we have to do is disconnect it. Probability of detection 100%. Initiating self destruct sequence. ...or not.)_ and had been to Chora's Den ( _Put your tongue back in your mouth before you trip over it, L.T._ ) to find Harkin, but two of Saren's assassins had been there to ambush them.

After taking out the two turians ( _Those were Saren's men, Commander. Thank you, Lieutenant Obvious. You're welcome? Uh, ma'am._ ), explaining the disturbance-for _hours_ -to C-Sec ( _The investigation into Saren has been closed, Commander Shepard. We're remedying that situation._ ), looking around for either Harkin or a turian general named Septimus and finding neither ( _Is there no one around on this damned station? Guess not, Commander. It was a rhetorical question, Lieutenant. Yes, ma'am._ ), and nearly getting steamrolled by an angry krogan named Wrex, the Commander made her announcement to go shopping and invited her ground team to join her.

Williams just shrugged and tagged along. "I don't have enough creds to buy anything that would do any damage in fight," she said, a grin turning the corners of her generous lips up, "but I'll watch you spend yours, Commander. Always wondered what you commando types pay rates were like."

"Shock trooper," the Commander corrected, sounded annoyed.

Kaidan's eyebrows shot up surprised at the venom that dripped from Shepard's plush lips. He wondered if the Chief had inadvertently stumbled into No Man's Land with that question. The Chief blinked, suddenly caught in said shock trooper's deadly stare. She looked at Kaidan for help, and damn it if he wasn't tempted to aid his fellow marine. He was at war with self-preservation and wanting to help a damsel in distress—though he knew said distressed damsel could plug a target at 600 meters. He'd witnessed it.

Throwing caution to the wind and thinking that there wasn't enough ketchup in the galaxy for the amount of word-eating he had done over the last two days, Kaidan went ahead and intervened. "What's the difference?" he asked, happy that his voice sounded cool and collected and innocent even.

The look Shepard leveled him with her coppery eyes frightened and aroused him all in the same instant. He licked his lips nervously, and her eyes darted down to watch before returning to meet his dark eyes. Something wild and uninhibited flashed in those odd-colored eyes. Unsure of what he saw there, he could only wait nervously until she answered. For a minute, he was unsure if she might throw him against the wall with her biotics and walk away or throw him against the wall with her body and kiss him. And he knew he was a sick bastard for thinking that either option would be fun.

Finally she gave an unladylike snort and stated, "I get a bigger gun." Then she grinned, her eyes glinting in the low lights of the market. "You two are brave, I'll give you that." Williams visibly relaxed and gave a laugh. He only chuckled and wondered if he had imagined the look of interest she had directed his way.

So they went about shopping. It surprised Kaidan that it wasn't just a shopping excursion, but the trip to the Wards doubled as an excuse to question some of the patrons.

"Feros seems to be a hot topic here," Shepard remarked after haggling with a volus over two wet wear upgrade kits and trading gossip. Thanking the volus, she nabbed her goodies and walked off, heading toward the transit. Kaidan followed, his longer strides enabling him to quickly surpass her and having to slow down to match her pace.

"Think there's anything wrong?" Williams inquired, her shorter legs requiring her to scurry to catch up with the tall Commander and taller Lieutenant. Her brow furrowed, but Kaidan didn't know if it was because Shepard had them run around the Citadel for the past two days or if she was concerned with the human colony on Feros.

"They haven't had any contact in a while."

"It's been almost fifty-six hours since the attack on Eden Prime," Kaidan mused. "Maybe—"

"Hot damn, look at that," Williams burst out suddenly as she rushed off through a door to the observation deck before it closed.

Caught off guard, Kaidan tensed, his hand automatically going for his sidearm, ready for more assassins. Shepard's hand on his shoulder and her gentle voice kept him from bringing his Kessler to bear.

"Easy, marine," she said softly. She squeezed his shoulder and moved around him, following Williams to the observation deck. The warmth in her hand was enough to stop him in his tracks, and he swallowed at the unexpected reaction to her. Fueled by the adrenaline from Williams' sudden outburst, his heart kicked, pumping blood south instead of north, making his brain fuzzy.

_That_ … wasn't supposed to happen. He swallowed again and took a deep breath.

And mere moments later the unspeakable happened: His mouth and vocal chords worked before his brain realized what was happening. "Well, when you put it that way, there's no reason not to like you."

Both women turned from their posts at the observation deck and stared at him, Shepard's face flushed in the unnatural light, Williams' mouth agape with an eyebrow raised. There were a lot of times in his life when Kaidan Alenko had felt uncomfortable. In fact, he could count on both his hands and would have to pull off both his boots just to count the times he was uncomfortable in Shepard's presence since she boarded the _Normandy_.

"Uh." Kaidan fumbled for the words, inadvertently digging a deeper hole. "I mean us!" _Ah, hell._ "Humans! Ma'am." _Definitely not enough ketchup in the galaxy._

As they stood in the Wards of the Citadel, taking in the view of the nebula, the trio of human marines looked out of place leaning against the railing. Cars, with their mass effect fields keeping them on the path they needed to be, zoomed by. Aliens ambled past on their way to who knew where. And all Kaidan could think to say was something downright idiotic when the Commander had dryly remarked about old romance vids. _Oceans, beautiful women, and this emotion called love._

It hadn't helped that Williams had compared the Citadel station to Jump Zero. Digging up the past was not something he was fond of doing. Not after what had happened. The old fear of being a weapon and able to kill resurfaced. Vyrnnus' ghost and the haunted, frightened look in Rhana's eyes floated in his peripheral vision. He was on the verge of paralysis just from the words "Jump Zero" as he looked out over the sprawling metropolis of the Ward.

It also hadn't helped that the adrenaline from earlier hadn't yet faded from his system. His reaction to Shepard hadn't enabled his brain comprehend anything he was trying to say or do.

And then stupid fell out of his mouth.

Williams was the first to overcome the shock. "You don't take much shore leave; do you, L.T.?" He couldn't tell if she was joking or not.

Commander Shepard took a bit longer to regain her composure, but in the instant before she did, Kaidan realized: _Oh, God. I affect her too._


	6. Tally Ho, Sally Forth… or Whatever

Kaidan had just reported for watch in the CIC when Chief Williams came from down below and saluted the _Normandy_ 's Command Master Chief, Operations Chief Han Vassiliadis. Vassiliadis, a bearded, dark-skinned man with a genial gaze and an impressive height, gave her orders and, as luck would have it, she came to stand at the watch station beside Kaidan, grinning jovially at him.

"CIC duty, huh?" he asked returning her smile. He had enjoyed her company over the past two weeks while they were uncovering evidence against the rogue Spectre Saren and getting into fire fights on the Citadel. The Chief was a good soldier and her sense of humor was enough to keep him smiling, though there were times he just wanted to throttle her for pointing out his faults. And she was pretty too. She didn't have Shepard's more refined looks, but—

 _Whoa there, soldier_.

Why was he comparing Shepard and Williams? Sure, he admired Shepard, but… He mentally shook it off, just as he had been doing ever since looking out over the Wards. _Oceans, beautiful women, and this emotion called love…_

Duty first.

It didn't matter that the curiosity was there. He had a job to do. Whatever was stored on that beacon was damned important. They didn't know what the Reapers were, but they had to stop Saren no matter what, and focusing all of his attention on his commanding officer was not going do anyone any good. Losing focus could get someone injured in the battlefield or worse. _Look at what happened with the beacon,_ he thought self-depreciatingly. Compartmentalizing as he had trained to do at BaAT and also at basic, he gave his brain a shake and himself a harsh mental reprimand and focused to catch up to the conversation at hand.

"...pons watch." Williams was saying with a shrug. "Second day. Sure, I received some training at basic, but I've always only been groundside. It's not like I had time to go over everything while picking up those aliens. This is new for me. Hell, we're about to go head to head with a fucking Spectre. I'm not scared, but it makes you think, y'know?"

"You'll do just fine, Williams," he assured her before turning his attention back to his terminal, frowning a little when one of the displays didn't light up as it should. It had performed just fine during the run to Eden Prime. His mouth twisted into a full blown scowl when the entire monitor winked out briefly, rebooted and then went out completely. _Terrific._ It was times like this he couldn't wait for Eight Bells.

"Problems?"

He sighed and looked over at the Chief, whose eyebrow was raised out of curiosity. "Computer glitch, looks like." He kneeled down in front of the paneling and brought up his omni-tool, running a quick diagnostic.

"I can't believe Shepard's a Spectre," she commented quietly, absently. "The first human Spectre. It blows your mind to think about it."

He nodded. _Yeah._ He, Williams, the turian C-Sec Agent Garrus Vakarian, the quarian Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and the krogan Urdnot Wrex had all been present at the hearing that presented the Citadel Council with the evidence against Saren—The hearing in which Shepard practically talked the Council into allowing a human Spectre. Williams was right. It was mind blowing.

It had taken nearly a week for Ambassador Udina to make arrangements with the Alliance to put the _Normandy_ under Shepard's command. That was also mind blowing. The fastest damned transfer Kaidan had ever witnessed in his eleven years in the service.

His omni-tool beeped at him, drawing him back to the present. He frowned mightily. Well, he wouldn't be fixing this here. He turned off the tool and stood, opening his mouth to speak to Williams.

As he did, his eyes met Shepard's coppery ones as she walked down the corridor from the bridge. His mouth snapped shut as he watched her stride gracefully past several servicemen, nodding at their salutes. Kaidan swallowed when she acknowledged him with a nod and stopped before XO Pressly, who saluted her.

"We're heading to the Artemis Tau Cluster," she announced, returning his salute with a nod.

Pressly wagged his head. "If anyone has to take over for Captain Anderson, I'm glad it's you." He cast his eyes around the area and leaned in a little closer. "I'm not sure about having non-humans on our ship though," he told her in a voice that was anything but quiet.

"We're all on the same team here, Pressly," she told him, though Kaidan thought she looked a little shocked at Pressly's admission. Kaidan was a little surprised at the admission himself. He had no idea that the older man was xenophobic. He had enough trouble with Williams' views. Though he respected the hell out his subordinate, her comments on the Citadel still rubbed him the wrong way.

"With all due respect, ma'am," Pressly replied, "that's what they said about Nihlus." He shrugged. "Look how that turned out."

Shepard blinked. So did Kaidan. In fact, he wanted to strangle his new XO. He felt the tale-tell signs of the mass effect field building in his body. His nostrils flared before he could stamp down his anger. Pressly had no right to say that to Shepard. Eden Prime wasn't her fault. The beacon… Nihlus had walked into a trap. And it wasn't because Saren was a different species. There were human murderers too.

He put his hand on the watch station and the moment his fingers brushed the smooth metal, he jumped back from the shock. Damn static build up.

Williams snickered at him. He cut his eyes to hers in warning, and she quickly returned to her duties.

What was wrong with him? He hadn't been this out of control of his emotions since… since Jump Zero… since before coming to grips with what had happened… And he had had. It was his past,and it made him who he was. So what had happened to his control?

"Speak freely, Pressly," Shepard said after a moment of studying her second-in-command, her voice bringing Kaidan away from the memories and his self-analysis, "I need to know if you have a problem with non-humans."

"Oh, it's not that Commander," the XO reassured her. "It's just that, well, humanity has always handled its own problems. Saren attacked one of our colonies. We should be the ones to stop him."

Kaidan blinked as the watch station flickered back to life suddenly. He busied himself with the reboot as Shepard and Pressly continued to speak. His omni-tool told him that the station was operating normally. He frowned mightily at it. It wasn't supposed to flicker; it was supposed to monitor comm. buoys.

"Following a lead, ma'am?" Pressly's voice pulled Kaidan's attention away from his station.

"An asari scientist should be on a Prothean excavation site somewhere within the cluster."

Kaidan thought that was the vaguest lead he had ever heard. Didn't they have something more to go by? Judging by the expression on Pressly's and Williams' faces, they were wondering the same thing.

Shepard ran a hand through the different lengths of her short hair, looked tired. She made her way around Pressly and stepped up to the map platform, touching a button on the bar in front of her. The Milky Way Galaxy display wavered and disappeared. A new image of a violet nebula sprang up, a bloom of violence against the backdrop of CIC. Artemis Tau, a nebula comprised of several thousand stars, was a few million miles across but was condensed to the display that hung over CIC. The computer highlighted all the known systems within the new cluster. It looked like someone had scribbled over the display in blue.

Shepard frowned. "Any suggestions?" Her voice rang out over the whole CIC and many stopped what they were doing to look up at her.

Pressly studied the map and then a terminal closest to him. He scrolled through the summary quickly. "Artemis Tau contains thirty-two systems with known planets. All thirty-two have been mapped by the turians. Most of which are claimed by hanar, volus or batarian interests."

"Most?" Kaidan asked looking at his own display as it suddenly died again. Yeah, this definitely needs to be fixed, he thought. When he looked back up, Shepard's eyes were on him. He felt warm under her gaze, his mouth going dry. He averted his attention back to his terminal as it rebooted again.

Pressly touched a few buttons. "Only four are listed as interests to the Citadel Races as a whole. Artemis Tau _is_ in the Terminus Systems after all. It's well into the Terminus Shock and it's not like the Council wants anything to do with the 'lesser' species." The word "lesser" dripped off his tongue like bad turnips.

"Would an asari scientist be interested in digging on a Citadel world or on a batarian world?" Williams spoke up.

"The salarians were having trouble with the hanar at one of their dig sites," Kaidan supplied as he remembered an extranet broadcast from a few nights ago. "I bet the asari get the same thing if they were to go poking about on hanar claimed worlds."

No one spoke a few moments as Shepard reached out and fingered the display, moving the cursor to highlight various systems before she spoke again. "Pressly, isolate the four systems," she ordered, "along with their shipping lanes."

The display changed. The violet nebula was quartered by two thin lines. Four blue circles appeared, one in each quadrant. The circles in the top quadrants were labeled Athens and Knossos. The circles in the bottom quadrants were labeled Macedon and Sparta. A thick red line appeared and linked Macedon to Sparta and Athens. Another appeared and linked Sparta to Athens and Knossos.

"Hades Gamma relays to Macedon; Macedon is the crux of the Cluster," Pressly answered the unspoken question. "Knossos' shipping lines don't appear because they're to and from batarian claimed space. No other relays to or from Artemis Tau have or are in use by the Alliance or any Citadel races. If there's another relay, the turians didn't bother to add it to our systems." He spat the word "turians" the same as before-bad turnips.

Kaidan patched into the ship's systems and called up the Macedon system on his own screen, studied the stats a moment. "It's a medium-sized system, ma'am. It shouldn't take long to search. A day and a half at the most."

"And Sparta and Athens?" the Commander asked, she seemed lost in thought.

"Athens is an energetic star from what I've been told and read," Operations Chief Han Vassiliadis told them from where he standing by a serviceman who had just reported for watch. "Only one inhabitable world. There's a small colony on Proteus." Vassiliadis came to stand beside Pressly, his dark olive skin a sharp contrast with the XO. "My daughter and granddaughter are colonists there. My granddaughter was born there."

"Anything Prothean?" Shepard asked the ship's CMC.

Vassiliadis shook his head. "Not that I know of, Commander. It's mostly a water world, but the air's breathable. They say it's like the hanar home world." He shrugged. "The colony itself is mostly underwater due to the typhoons. Erica's the chief architect that's heading the pilot program there that's building under the ocean."

"You must be proud," Shepard said with a smile.

Vassiliadis beamed, smiling brightly. "Oh, yes, ma'am," he affirmed.

"Admiral Kahoku's men were in the Sparta system when they dropped off the ladar, Commander," Kaidan said as he focused his terminal on the system. "We could check it out while we're there."

"Kill two space cows with one slug?" she asked, her eyes studying the display before her. Kaidan wondered what she was thinking about as she touched her own display, calling up the Sparta system. She touched the shipping line and it zoomed back out to the nebula. She touched another line and zoomed in to display a starburst of green.

"Attican Beta, ma'am?" Pressly queried. "The Feros colony?"

Shepard shrugged. "Artemis Tau could take weeks."

"Saren does have a jump start on us," Williams said from beside Kaidan. She crossed her arms over her chest. "If the Council had listened to you in the first place…"

Again a shrug. "It worked out, Chief. I can go places that I wouldn't be able to now." Shepard, the first human Spectre, pursed her lips, her intense gaze taking in the display before her, a small frown creasing her forehead and turning the corners of her lips down. "Pressly," she ordered after a full two minutes of staring at the display, "set course for Feros. According to Captain Anderson, there have been reports of geth."

"Ma'am?" Pressly seemed taken back.

"I'm not wasting my time on a damn scientist who may or may not be an enemy when another of our colonies may under attack," she said calmly. "If there are geth there, then Saren could be there, and that means we need to be there too."

"Aye, aye, ma'am." Pressly saluted.

"Joker," Shepard addressed the helmsman, "Tell me when we reach the Hades Gamma relay."

Joker's voice was tinny from the overhead speaker system. "Aye, aye, Commander. Seven hours till Exodus and then another two till Hades Gamma. Just so you know."

"Good." She looked at her XO. "Carry on, Pressly."


	7. Dinner Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Shep/Alenko dialogue featured in this chapter is from one of my favorite in-game chats. Not written by me, nor do I claim it. And you'll know it when you read it. Thank God for youtube!_

Alenko had effectively disassembled a control panel near the sleeper pods when Shepard found him after rounding the mess bulkhead. His omni-tool was beeping ominously at him, and he was frowning at the readout as he knelt in front of the panel, the line of his mouth tightening with every beep of his tool. Components and wires littered the floor around him.

The bulging muscles of his arms made her wonder if he was about to start shredding the panel into even more pieces or if he had already done that and that's why the control panel was in chaos. But she wiped that thought away almost instantly. In the two weeks she had known him, the Lieutenant had yet to appear unstable or even lose his temper. She had never met anyone with as much control and dedication to remaining in control as the man crouching before her. She had once known an infiltrator in the Ns that exuded a calmness that Alenko exhibited, but it was to be expected from a sniper. Not an L2 biotic Sentinel. She was curious as to what had made Alenko the man he was, but knew now would not be the appropriate time for anything like that.

Casually, she called up her own omni-tool and checked the duty roster, her lips puckering as she read it. _Dedicated alright._ Duty was one thing, but she needed her detail commander at the top of his game. He was assigned to First Dog Watch for a reason. Surely, he had better things to do. Like sleep. Or eat. Or make sure his weapons and armor were upgraded. They had no idea what to expect on Feros. They could be going up against a colony full of mutant zombies for all she knew. She mentally rolled her eyes at that. _One too many horror vids, Calleigh_. She powered down her omni-tool and walked over to him.

"Lieutenant?" she questioned with a raised eyebrow. He looked up, surprised to see her, and immediately stood and saluted crisply. She quickly waved away the salute. He hadn't thought to salute her on the Citadel while she was the XO, no sense in starting it back up now that she was the CO. He had earned her respect enough to stretch the Regs a little. Who cared about protocol when he was protecting her ass from merc slugs? And besides, the man knew how to give orders just as well as he could receive them. He definitely had earned those commendations.

"Commander," he greeted, rubbing the sweat off his brow, a black streak following from the grease on his hands.

Careful not to laugh, she raised an eyebrow at the panel. "What are you doing to my ship, Alenko?" she queried, maintaining the blank façade she had perfected over the years. She was only joking, but couldn't help herself. Sure enough the Lieutenant looked panicked, instantly going on the defensive, raising his greasy hands as if to ward her off. He must have seen the humor in her eyes because he dropped his hands and gave an almost imperceptive smile. It sent her pulse skittering and almost brought a frown to her face. He shouldn't have that effect on her.

"The Comm. monitor in CIC is down, ma'am," he told her with a shrug as she tackled her hormones and mentally tied them like space cows as she'd done in her childhood on Mindoir. "I'm trying to get it back running again." He appeared frustrated, noticing his hands suddenly. "I'm about ready to ask Tali for help," he added softly, powering down his omni-tool and using a towel to wipe the grease off his hands.

"Adams has been bragging about her," Shepard said with a smile, thinking about the quarian who hung out in Engineering almost twenty-four-seven. The last time she'd spoken with her, Tali had been so excited to be on board that she had nearly talked Shepard's ear off. "You look like you could use a break. Wasn't your shift over thirty minutes ago?"

Kaidan hesitated, blinking in bafflement. Well, she _was_ the CO. Of course she knew the shifts. "I'll take one after—"

"Wasn't a request," she stated simply, surprising him. Before he could say anything, she called out, "Adams?"

The Chief Engineer's voice sounded from the comm. over their heads drawing their eyes up. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Send Tali to the crew's quarters. I've got a job for her."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

"It's, uh, it's just a panel, ma'am," Kaidan assured her, feeling awkward under the sudden intenseness of her gaze.

Again she surprised him. "Just wanted to get a sense of where the crew's at," she said, then tilted her brow. "Thoughts?"

Well, if she was going to seek him out, then maybe, maybe she would be open to listen to him for a moment. He knew she didn't play politics. In fact, she seemed to completely run in the opposite direction. But he had his doubts about this whole thing. Ever since Eden Prime. There was something big going on. And it scared the hell out him.

"I—Well, if you have a minute, Commander," he said. "I don't want to take up your personal time."

"I always make time for my officers," she told him. "I was about to grab something to eat. Come join me." He must have looked shocked because she continued with a shrug, "I like to know my crew. I wouldn't have asked otherwise. We've been too busy to really chat." She leaned closer and gave him a conspiratorial look. "And it's nice to be able to eat around another biotic. I spooked most the crew the first twenty-four hours I was on board."

He understood that all too well. "I… Aye, aye, ma'am." He powered up his omni-tool and saved the diagnostics into an OSD for Tali for when she came from down below and then shut it back down again.

The illogical part of his brain told him that she'd just ordered him on a date. The absurd idea made him giddy, but he jerked his brain back to the logical side as he forced himself to remember what she had told him on the Citadel: _"I appreciate the thought, Lieutenant, but we're on duty here."_

Duty.

And even if duty wasn't involved, Shepard was off limits and out of his league anyway.

"Relax, Lieutenant," she said grabbing his discarded towel and rubbing at his forehead with it. … _the Hell?_ Caught off guard he stiffened. "You aren't relaxing, Alenko."

"Um."

"You rubbed grease all over your forehead." Shepard tossed the greasy towel in his face and then turned and led the way to the galley wondering what had possessed her to enter his personal space. The sound of his boots on the metal floor as he followed her only made her more uncomfortable.

She looked at the ration unit with a frown. "Nutritious, my ass," she commented, then looked back at him with a sly smile to hide her discomfort. "They could have at least given the damn thing some kind of flavor."

"You mean besides bad?" he asked, willing himself to relax in her presence. His commanding officer had just cleaned his face for him. So what? It was well known that Shepard was a neat freak. No big deal. He and Williams had watched as she had carefully cleaned each of her weapons each night when they were at the Alliance barracks on the Citadel. It meant nothing.

They were having a meal together. So what? They were going to discuss politics, not a wedding. _Oh, damn. The wedding._ 2nd Lieutenant Ryerson and Staff Lieutenant Alvarez's wedding was in two days. And he wouldn't be taking leave until the problem with Saren was resolved. _Damn it._

So engrossed in thought was he that Kaidan missed Shepard's musical laugh at his joke. She frowned at him slightly, waving her hand in front of his face.

"Shepard to Alenko," she remarked snapping her fingers. He blinked bringing his thoughts back up to speed.

"I just remembered that I requested leave, ma'am," he told her guiltily as Shepard stepped away from the dispenser with her tray. "But I guess that doesn't matter now."

"Anderson turned it down. I thought he already told you."

"No. Guess there was too much going on." He shrugged as he picked a flavor he hadn't tried before, loading the nutrient rich meal onto his tray. "Well, that's all right."

"Family?" she inquired as they both grabbed energy drinks and made their way to the mess.

He shook his head. "A friend's wedding." They sat opposite each other. He was _not_ going to tell her that Ryerson and Alvarez had broken Regs to get married. Nope. No way.

"Are we—"

"Amaterasu, ma'am. I'm not going to ask to be dropped off in the local cluster. Finding the Conduit and stopping Saren takes a lot more priority than personal time." He took a bite, chewed and swallowed, then added, "I'll send them my regards when we get near a comm. buoy."

"The _Normandy_ was already supposed to be back at port and added to the 63rd Scout Flotilla roster," Shepard mused with a nod, opening her energy drink. "I bet Mikhailovich was pissed that we got pulled for special assignment." Her eyes twinkled mischievously, and Kaidan wondered if there was something behind the look. "But you were still supposed to go with. According to the transfer logs anyway."

"I figured I'd be reassigned elsewhere, but at the time I thought everything was just to prove to the Council—Well, never mind. Here we are." He sighed, met her unwavering gaze. "Off the record?"

She readily agreed. "Naturally."

"I think there's something wrong here," he admitted, thinking back to all the little details of what they had uncovered on the Citadel, what they knew about the geth from Tali, and what he knew of the information that had been downloaded into Shepard's brain. "This Saren is looking for records on some kind of galactic extinction. But we can't get backup from the Council?" He shook his head, met her eyes with a shrug. She didn't seem to be running away from his political views. He apologized anyway. "Sorry, Commander. There's writing on the wall here, but someone isn't reading it." _God that felt good._

It felt better when she nodded. "The Council doesn't want to believe anything's wrong." And he agreed. He could see it from the Council's point of view, but, come on. They needed a little help here. "I'd call it human nature, but…" she trailed off gesturing with her spork.

"I hear ya." He collected his thoughts while Shepard took a bite of her food. Took a swig of his drink when he realized that watching her eat was erotic and had to bring his mind back to the conversation at hand. "I-It just seems like a group that's been around as long as the Council should see this coming." And they should. The damn Council had been around for thousands of years. What if Saren had already found the information he needed?

The Commander nodded, opened her mouth to say something but Tali rounded the corner from the elevator.

"Oh, hello, Shepard. Lieutenant."

Kaidan started at her tone. She sounded so… down. He shared a look with Shepard wondering exactly how young the quarian really was.

"Are you okay, Tali?" she asked.

"I don't know," the young quarian told her, hugging herself. She sighed through her breather mask, the sound raspy. "Your ship is amazing and your crew has been really great to me. Especially your Chief Engineer." She gestured as if trying to make herself clearer. "But I just sort of feel… out of place. The _Normandy_ runs so smooth." She sounded as though she were lost. "It feels like we're not even moving. And the engines are so quiet. How do you sleep at night?"

Kaidan looked at her incredulously. "The silence wakes you up?" he asked.

Tali nodded. "Back on the Flotilla, the last thing you want to hear is silence. It means an engine's died or an air filter's shut down." She seemed to shudder at that, though there was no real way to tell what she was feeling or thinking since they couldn't see her face.

She sat down next to Kaidan, slumping in the seat. He could barely make out her slanted eyes through her mask and he wondered, since her species was a dextro-protein species, what exactly did she look like? "I guess you don't have to worry about that here," she mused, "But old habits die hard." She traced imaginary patterns on the table with two of her three fingers before looking up at Shepard and then at Kaidan. "But it's more than just the silence," she revealed sullenly. "This ship feels so empty. It's like half the crew is missing." He could almost see her smile through her breather mask as she admitted, "Back home, I couldn't wait to go on my Pilgrimage. I couldn't wait to get away from the crowds. Now that I'm out here—" she gave a shrug—"I kind of miss them."

Homesick? _Poor kid._ Kaidan was at a loss for words. He had no idea what to tell her to cheer her up.

"Sounds like the Pilgrimage isn't just about finding resources for the fleet," Shepard said. "Maybe it's about teaching you to appreciate your people and culture."

"You're probably right." Tali agreed with a sigh. "Was there something you needed? Adams said that you had a job for me."

Shepard gave a nod. "Alenko here decided to tear up the ship," she accused playfully, a smile ruffling her lips.

"I—but Commander," Kaidan fumbled for the words, unsure of how to react. Sure, she was teasing, but she was his superior officer.

Tali, not knowing that Shepard was joking, took offense. "Tear up the ship?" she exclaimed, her voice raising an octave as she jumped to her feet. "Are you crazy?"

Startled by her reaction, Shepard let out a laugh. "The comm. monitor in CIC isn't working properly. He was repairing it from the central station before I ordered him to eat." She gestured over her shoulder. "I was just giving him a hard time and having a laugh at his expense."

"A torn up ship is nothing to laugh at," Tali rebuked her, "but," she turned her head towards him and allowed, "he is amusing when he's flustered."

Kaidan gaped at her and Shepard laughed, and he could only grimace in good humor, a flush coloring his face. He shook his head with a smile as Tali went off to repair the "damage" he'd done.

Shepard gripped her cup with slender hands and took a sip. "Think she's in a little better spirits now?"

He shrugged. "No clue. You know, I've never had to deal with a homesick quarian before."

The Commander snorted. "You and me both, Alenko." She finished the last bite of her meal. "So the Council doesn't want to believe anything's wrong," she reiterated her statement from earlier picking up their conversation and he nodded.

"It's funny," he said thinking of Shepard's words to Tali as well as the Council who seemed to have their heads stuck up their asses, "We finally get out here, and the final frontier is already settled. And the residents don't even seem to be impressed by the view. Or the dangers," he added. Saren was dangerous. Saren was a rogue Spectre seeking to bring the return of the Reapers. Reaper just sounded ominous. And the Council had only sent Shepard and her crew of thirty people. What the hell?

Shepard's coppery eyes sparkled as she looked at him. "Well, well," she said, resting her chin on her hand, a bemused smile on her lips, "you're a romantic. Did you sign on for 'the dream', Alenko? Secure a man's future in space?"

A sheepish grin crossed his handsome face, and he leaned back in his chair to study her. "Yeah," he chuckled, remembering hours engrossed in dreaming of going to the stars, "I read a lot of those books when I was kid. Where the hero goes to space to prove himself worthy of a woman he loves." He blinked as he realized what he just said. And how it sounded. "Or, you know," he added quickly, "for justice."

She said nothing, seemed to wait for him to continue.

"May be I was a romantic in the beginning," he said, "but I thought about it after Brain Camp—" She arched a delicate eyebrow at him questioningly. "Ah, sorry, 'Biotic Acclimation and Temperance training,'" he explained. He shook his head. "I'm not looking for the dream. I just want to do some good. See what's out here. Sorry if I got too informal. Protocol wasn't a big focus back in BAaT."

Shepard nodded and then proceeded to surprise the hell out him. "Tell me about it," she ordered.

And he did, relaxing as they sat there and talked. It felt so natural to talk about eezo exposures and BAaT with her. To answer her questions about Jump Zero. He even told her about Rhana when she accused him of being a horny teenager while on the station.

"I'm not one who does that sort of thing, Commander," he denied, "Not lightly anyway." He didn't believe in just falling into bed with someone. Hell, maybe he still was a romantic, thought ruefully before continuing on about the girl he'd fallen for at Jump Zero. He told Shepard about Rhana's family and a little about how Rhana had trouble fitting in with everyone.

"But she was smart," he elaborated, remembering the girl, how she could run circles around his calculus, "and charming as hell." He recalled her dark eyes and the way she would look at him while beating him at card games. "Beautiful, but not stuck up about it. Like you, I guess." Shepard blinked at him, looked uncomfortable. He swallowed and added, "ma'am." Like it would help. The words had already flowed past his lips.

"Sounds like she was special to you," she remarked, regaining her composure quickly.

"She was." And it made his heart hurt to think about what had happened. "Maybe she felt the same way, but… Things never fell together. Training. You know."

"Jump Zero's a long way from home," she said, "What's it like?"

He snorted. "The grand gateway to humanity looks a lot better in the vids," he replied and then he stood, suddenly uncomfortable about talking any more on the subject. He knew Vyrnnus was probably laughing at him now. Besides, they had finished their meals before the subject had been broached. He shouldn't have even—but he did. It was done. "Anyway. I'm sure you intended this to be a casual debrief, not a bull session about stuff that happened years ago."

"I wanted to get to know you a little better," she assured him. "That's all. Thanks for the talk, Kaidan."

He smiled, not really knowing what to say. "Well, you're welcome, ma'am." And then he had to know. "You, ah, you make a habit of getting this personal with everyone?" He cursed himself for sounding so hopeful.

"No," she told him, sounding surprised. "No, I don't." She stood, collected her tray. "We'll talk again later, Kaidan."

What did that mean? He wondered. Stared at her before wrapping his mind around the implications. "I'll—uh, I'll need some time to process that, Commander," he admitted, and by the look of it, she would too. "But yeah, I'd like that."


	8. Sacrificial Sock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A little Joker goodness, cuz Feros is kicking my ass. This is shoooort, but a nice reprieve from the violence of the next chapter. Enjoy._

"What the hell?" The feminine shriek carried across the crew quarters and echoed into the mess. A stream of very unfeminine obscenities followed. "That's disgusting, Moreau!"

Joker only grinned at the Gunnery Chief's shrill voice from across the crew deck as he imagined her look of horrified disbelief as it morphed into something more…feral. _Someone_ found the cruise sock. Wasn't his. No, his was stored safely in his locker. Wasn't quite stiff yet. He had no idea whose sock that was. A treat found during XO's Happy Hour. But he thought he'd be nice and share. Williams did hot bunk with him after all. And she got mad so easily. _Ah, MaRINEs: Muscles are Required, Intelligence Not Essential._

"Only thinking of you, babe," he shouted over his dinner and through the bulkhead that separated the mess and the crew's quarters. She swore at him some more, her angry stomping bringing her closer to the mess. Something decidedly wet smacked up against the bulkhead. He half expected her to enter the mess and punch him and was slightly disappointed when he heard her stalk off, followed by the grating sound of a sleeper pod being activated. He wondered idly if she slept in her boots.

_Kinky._

Alenko eyed him warily from across the table. "Do I want to know?" he asked as poked at what appeared to be road apples, though he couldn't be sure. The meat identifier had already been eaten by the time Joker had managed to get to the galley, fix his chow and then have a seat at the mess table. He was sure Alenko's food had gone cold by now. They had been sitting there a while. He knew how much the man hated eating in front of anyone—which is why he sat directly in front of him. _Exploit the weakness._

His grin broadened, opened his mouth to speak. He wondered how long he could go before Alenko got grossed out enough to leave. _Going for the record._

"Forget it," Alenko said giving him a cold glare. He took a tentative bite of gray meat and started to chew. Joker ate his shit-on-a-shingle in silence wondering why he had chosen creamed chipped beef on toast to begin with, waiting until the time presented itself before elaborating on his fun with the Chief. Alenko had just relaxed enough to shovel a few bites into his mouth before Joker spoke.

"Cruise sock."

Alenko choked briefly on his— _that is Swedish Meatballs isn't it_ —before looking at Joker incredulously, his eyebrows high. "You didn't."

"Not mine." The pilot shrugged at the Lieutenant's bug-eyed look. He snorted and leaned back in his chair. "Mine's in my locker."

"TMI, Moreau." _Well, someone's panties are in a twist today._

He looked at his nails smugly. "Found it during Cleaning Stations," he elaborated just for the hell of it. Then batted his eyelashes at Alenko playfully. "Guess someone's missing a friend."

Alenko shook his head. "The images you put in my head."

"Sexy beast, aren't I?"

Disgusted, Alenko stood, glowering down at the pilot. He grabbed his food and walked off.

_Record time._

Joker frowned. Now he had no one to talk to but his shit-on-a-shingle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**NAVspeak Definitions (US only – I think):** _
> 
> _**Cleaning Stations/XO Happy Hour:** the designated time on the ship where everyone cleans their watch/duty stations or break out the swabs, usually ordered by the XO or CMC or another Occifer_
> 
> _**Cruise Sock/Sacrificial Sock:** the sock that is "sacrificed" during a long tour for cleaning up after masturbation; usually stiff by the end of the tour; has a tendency to be found in... odd places where dumped around the ship. Wash, rinse, repeat. Kthxbye._
> 
> _**Meat identifier:** the side dish served with the main entree; usually the only way to tell what's being served._


	9. Anger Management

Angry.

Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams didn't have time to calm her nerves before her military training and the adrenaline surge kicked in. She didn't have time to replay what had just happened. Which was just as well—being covered in someone else's gore was not something she needed to focus on. Hell, her armor was still streaked with the blood of the 212 and those unlucky civilians who had gotten in the way of the invading geth on Eden Prime. As it was, Ash barely had time to pull out her rifle, much less aim it at the mechanical creatures that were shooting plasma, strange slugs, and rockets at the team of three marines.

Ash took hold of the irrational fear that had suddenly made her choke up as she braced herself against the quickly scavenged cover, focusing only on the anger she felt when she saw those things—those geth. Those mother-fucking flashlight heads. The word _angry_ didn't do her feelings justice. But she fired at the enemy with an _angry_ snarl anyway, sadistically pleased when the tungsten rounds hit their marks.

The fresh specks of blood, meat, and bone matter that splattered all three marines' armor spoke volumes. The colonist hadn't stood a chance against the geth rocket that had exploded against him, torn his flesh and rendered his insides molten in single instant. And she had heard the sound of the rocket as it was fired before she could reach out and grab him, pull him to safety. If she had been quicker then maybe, but—

"Joker!" the Commander's voice cut across the comm. as she and Ash surged behind a container for cover. The Lieutenant had rushed for cover on the opposite side of the pier bringing his side arm to bear as though it were second nature. "We're taking heavy fire!" She fired a shot from her shotgun that took down one of the snipers, bathing the deck in white fluids. "Tell Tali, Wrex and Garrus to get their asses out here! And bring up the ship's fucking shields!"

It was strange: the things one thought of as enemy fire reigned down on them. They were ambushed. All they could do was fire helplessly and duck for cover as a rocket trooper fired rocket after rocket at them, as a sniper carefully aimed at any exposed body part. They couldn't fall back to the ship lest they lose whatever strategic position they may or may not have. And they couldn't abandon Feros. They could only press onward. Kill the fuckers. And all Ash could focus on was the fact that geth bled white. Who would have thought that? _Hydraulic fluid, maybe? The quarian would know._

Death was a possibility—a very real possibility. Just as real as it had been on Eden Prime as she watched in horror as Bhatia and Gomez and Thompson and all the rest had fallen, leaving only her and Kingston alive. As she had agreed with Kingston to separate and find help and had run for her life from the drones that wanted her blood.

As Kingston had been impaled on a spike. The Commander had called it death-on-a-stick. The Lieutenant called it a dragon's tooth. Ash called it Hell.

Angry. So fucking Angry.

The staccato flare of the assault rifle in her hands and the jarring sensation against her shoulder and wrists kept Ash's mind on killing the creatures who had invaded their space. It grounded her. Kept her sane, she supposed. Kept her focused, that was for sure. The Commander had been right to choose Feros first. How many lives had been lost so far? How many lives would have been lost had Shepard chosen to go after that other alien? Benezia's daughter? Feros didn't have an Alliance patrol. Feros was owned by a corporation. They had their own security force. The geth had slaughtered two squads of trained marines. How many rent-a-cops were left on Feros?

Shepard was glowing with dark energy. So was Alenko. Together they used their biotic skills and slammed two crates into the rocket trooper, effectively squashing it between them, its white liquids splattering on the pier. It sparked and belted out a mournful, spluttering hiss-clicking sound as it died. Ash shot it in the head, eliciting more white wash that was oh, so satisfying.

"Alenko, take point," Shepard instructed, surprising Ash. He didn't hesitate. "Wrex, go with." It was at that point that Ash realized the rest of the team was there and the eight geth were down. "Williams and I will bring up the rear. Tali, Garrus. Go."

Shepard's shot gun was smoking, over heated. The pale skin of her face below her eye shield was splattered with the colonist's blood. Her armor was gore-encrusted and red streaked-more blood. A sniper round had been slowed by her shields, but it hadn't stopped it. The heavy gray armor had. There was a hole in the chest plate near the N7 engraving, but she didn't seem affected by it. It must not have broken the skin.

She looked at Ash, her brown eyes wary. "A bit of an over kill, don't you think, Williams?" she asked. Damn her if her tone wasn't gentle.

"Just making sure, Skipper," Ash told her, inwardly cursing at how defensive she sounded.

Shepard only nodded as they waited for her gun to cool off. Looking around the docking bay only confirmed their fears. Feros had taken heavy attacks. The walls and floors were scored with burn marks and rounds. Debris littered the area. Even the shipping crates had blast imprints. The geth had—and still were—doing a number on the colony.

"Negative contacts, Commander," Alenko's voice affirmed over the comm. and both Shepard and Ash breathed a small sigh of relief. "Correction, ma'am," he voiced again, much to their consternation. "Targets sighted."

Ash tensed, looked at Shepard. A muscle ticked in her jaw as the Commander looked disgustedly at her inoperable weapon.

Alenko's tone changed. He was no longer talking to the Commander. "Use your visuals. They're jamming our optics. Don't know how many are out there."

Irritated, Shepard dropped her shot gun on the deck and pulled out her pistol. "Copy that. Save some for us, will ya?" She and Ash were already moving towards their position.

"Where's the fun in that?" he retorted. A handful of seconds later he added, "Ma'am."

Shepard rolled her eyes, surprising Ash. "Someone needs to pull that stick out of his ass," she grumbled. Ash added her own, "Amen," to the comment.

Ash liked Alenko, but damn if he wasn't square. However, Ash didn't hold that against him. He was one of the only officers that she had met or served with that treated her decently after learning her name. She didn't know if he'd read her file or if was interested in knowing about who she was related to, but he didn't seem to care. And he had recommended her to join them on the _Normandy_. Who wouldn't just love a guy after a recommendation to serve with some of the finest men and women the Alliance Fleet had to offer on the most advanced ship in the Fleet? He was sweet too. Though a little anal retentive.

And cute.

_Wait._

Where'd that come from? _Focus, Ash._ Priorities: Colony to save; geth to kill; vengeance to be had; name to clear.

Besides, she was a Williams. Nobody but nobody in the military was interested in a Williams. Alenko was a career man. No way. After Shanxi, her family was lucky to be liked in a civilian climate. And there were Regs. She wasn't even commissioned. _Like that would ever happen._ Not even in the same league as the LT. Not to mention said LT was smart and funny and good looking.

Ash mentally snorted. Not her type. At all. Well, the good looking part and possibly the funny part too. But she generally only liked the bang more than she liked the man. The LT? He was the type you brought home to mom.

No, definitely not her type at all.

* * *

Kaidan didn't know what the hell they were fighting, but the damn thing kept jumping around like a damn grass hopper. Its mechanical hiss didn't seem all that threatening. Until it shot at him. He swore loudly when his pistol overheated.

"Alenko?" Shepard's voice cut over the comm. channels. "Sitrep."

For some idiotic reason, his mouth quirked with humor. "SNAFU, Commander," he replied using an old acronym his father used to use to piss off his mother. He and Wrex ducked as the geth hopper thing fired at them again. "There's some kind of thing that hops around. Watch out, it'll overheat your weapons. I wouldn't trust letting it hit your armor either. It may be able to overload the shield generators, too. Who the hell knows?"

The others had entered the tower now, edging closer to the hopping menace. "Tali?" Shepard inquired. She fired a few rounds from her pistol, but the creature continued to jump from beam to beam, seemingly growling at them.

"I've never seen anything like it before," the quarian proclaimed, her voice ringed with stunned disbelief. She fired a shot from her shot gun. "Amazing."

"Kill it," Wrex grunted. He fired a shot. It missed, and he cursed colorfully. "What the hell does SNAFU mean, Alenko?" He didn't so much ask as demand. Apparently the merc didn't like being in the dark about things. He powered up his barrier as he avoided a volley of fireworks from the hopper. Kaidan wasn't so lucky. Knocked to the ground, he did what he could to increase his shields, the amber glow of his omni-tool glowing eerily in the confined space.

"Situation Normal: All Fucked Up," Kaidan translated with a grimace as he got up from a round that had clipped him in the shoulder. It burned like a bitch. However it wasn't any more painful than a migraine, so he considered himself lucky. He slid behind cover next to Tali and Williams. "Shields down," he reported. He was right about it shorting out the shield generators.

Wrex snorted. "You humans make too much noise." Kaidan blinked at that, baffled at the krogan's words. _Why the hell did he ask then?_

Shepard was behind a fallen piece of debris. Kaidan's eyes met hers for a brief instant. All business, but something loitered there before she focused her attention back at the hopper, fired consecutively as the creature jumped up the stairs and then to a pillar. He kept his back to the wall, felt the trickle of blood down his shoulder and mingle with the sweat under his arm. He suddenly felt the need to bathe.

Wrex reached out impatiently and froze the hopper with his biotics. The crack of Garrus' sniper rifle took the thing out and it hit the ground with a resounding clump.

"Tali, see if you can't salvage something from the memory core," Shepard ordered, "I want to know what they're after." With a sharp nod, the quarian did as told, powering up her omni-tool and ripping off a panel on the thing's chest.

She shook her head a few minutes later. "No good, Shepard. It probably began the wipe as soon as Wrex captured it." She powered down her omni-tool.

Shepard nodded, eyed everyone, her eyes lingering on Kaidan's shoulder. "Anything serious?" she questioned. When no one answered in the affirmative, she gave the order to move out. "Let's find this Fai Dan."

* * *

The colony was a wreck and its colonists were shell shocked at best. Fai Dan, the colony's appointed leader, seemed happy to see them. His assistant was not.

"You're a bit late, aren't you?" the dark skinned woman accused. Shepard thought she looked more shell shocked than the rest of the colonists, took note of the dark circles under the woman's eyes, the state of her armor: standard grade security. _Damn rent-a-cop._

"Arcelia," Fai Dan scolded. The woman didn't look like she regretted anything she had spoken. With a sigh, Fai Dan turned back to Shepard. "Sorry, Commander. Everyone's on edge since—"

He didn't have time to finish as a metallic wail sounded. The woman named Arcelia threw herself against Fai Dan. "Watch out! We've got geth in the tower!"

"Protect the heart of the colony!" Fai Dan shouted, his eyes glazing over, ready to protect his people.

"Garrus, Tali, Alenko, overload their shields," Shepard ordered as she, Wrex and Alenko took cover behind a crumbling piece of outcropping. The others disbursed to find cover as the geth started a barrage of fire. "Williams, time to earn your assassination badge. Wrex, knock 'em over."

"What about you, Shepard?" Wrex wanted to know. He watched as Alenko primed a proximity mine.

With flourish and a grin, Shepard pulled out a grenade. "I'm gonna blow the fuckers up."

Alenko threw his mine. "Works great for anger management," he told them knowingly as the mine blew, throwing electrical sparks out in cacophony of green and blue arcs, rendering the geth's shields inoperable. Shepard threw her grenade next, the resulting explosion taking out the four geth in the gangway. Six more appeared. Garrus and Tali both threw their mines, electrical arcs of blue overloading the machinations' shielding. Wrex snorted and powered up his shields, charged into the fray much like a rhino on earth would. He smashed the butt of his gun into the face of a geth, spraying himself and the ground in its white fluid. The rest of the squad was on his heels firing their weapons and charging their mines.

As they made their way slowly up the second tower, Tali was amazed at the geth's evolution. Never had she expected that the sentient AIs would evolve. This was…terrible and enlightening all at the same time. A part of her couldn't wait to get back to the Flotilla. They had to know what was going on. They had to realize that the AIs who drove them from their home world were more than mere machines. She wondered if Shepard would help her get any information she could take back to them. If she could find a way to regain her father's good graces… A geth sniper's slug came a little too close to her head, and she ducked with a yelp. Wrex took it out easily with two rapid shots from his shot gun and battle cry.

A drop ship spat out more geth on them. Tali grunted as she threw a proximity mine at the newly arrived reinforcements. It exploded on impact. Her HUD display showed that their shields were inoperative. Garrus and Ashley charged out of their hiding spot firing a steady volley of rounds from their assault rifles. They were in too close quarters to snipe the synthetics. Kaidan had even switched out his pistol for an assault rifle.

"Williams, Garrus, pull back!" Shepard shouted over the din and whir of drop ship's engines. Williams was suddenly surrounded as Garrus followed orders. "Damn it."

Tali noticed that Williams' shields were precariously low. Shepard handed off her grenade to Alenko. He seemed shocked. At least that's what Tali assumed his raised eyebrows meant. The young quarian was curious as to what Shepard had planned. Never did she expect that Shepard would run into the fray. She focused on Shepard instead of the fact that humans appeared to be so hairy. Eyebrows were weird. And she didn't want to even think about the facial hair the ass in the pilot's seat on board the incredible ship sported. That was just… gross.

"Stay here. Throw it once I reach her," the human woman commanded, and Tali gasped. "No proximity mines. Just throw the grenade."

"But, your shields—"

"Don't question me, Lieutenant," she yelled and took off. Tali held her breath as she watched the Commander sprint towards where Ashley was punching, kicking and firing at the geth who surrounded her. "Now, Kaidan!" Shepard barked as she slammed into a sniper.

* * *

 _Please let her know what she's doing._ Kaidan depressed the button, extracting the stabilizing fins and arming the Mark 14. He said a small prayer as he threw it like a discus. It stuck to the wall near the geth and his compatriots.

_Ten seconds._

Kaidan licked his lips, readying his rifle. He didn't dare shoot lest he hit Shepard or Williams. Their shields were weak enough. Even Wrex had backed off, his shotgun smoking. Shepard punched a shock trooper in its glowing eye, bathing her gloved hand in white fluid.

_Five seconds._

Shepard slammed her weight down on Ashley, taking her to ground and activating her biotic barrier, extending it around herself and the Chief. The grenade blew sending a blast of fire and a shower of debris into the air. The blast took out the remaining geth, spewing the area in sparks and white geth blood.

Kaidan didn't bother hiding his concern as he broke cover and sprinted towards the two women.

_Not again. Not like Eden Prime._

Now he had two people down. One who commanded him and one whom was under his command. He knew that both his commanding officer and the NCO had equipped Medical Interfaces onto their armor, but he didn't know if that would be enough to protect them from the blast. He hadn't felt this impotent since—

The geth ship was taking off. The sight brought no relief as he knelt down, his mouth tight and grim, bringing up his omni-tool and running an interface with both women's armors.

"That should keep Fai Dan and the others safe for the time being," he advised the others absently as he waited with baited breath for the readings on their vitals. It was more of a coping mechanism. "Shepard's going to need new armor. We'll have to go back to the ship. Then we'll head out for the main geth encampment."

It amazed him that Shepard had been able to extend her biotic shield to encompass the Chief. Thousands of questions about her training and implant came to mind, but he put them away for later. He had to make sure she was still breathing first. Cracks in Shepard's gray armor spider-webbed across her back, blood oozed from several holes. His omni-tool read back her vitals. Her blood pressure was low, and she was taking shallow breaths but her temperature was up. Probably from the exertion of running to tackle Williams. As gently as he could he pulled Shepard off the Williams.

"Ow," Williams breathed, gave a cough. Ash had taken a beating, but the microprocessors in her suit were administering the miniscule doses of medi-gel. It made her tingly all over. Course, it didn't help that she felt like she'd been run over by the Mako. At least twice.

She saw the concern on Alenko's face fade to relief. That made her tingly too. That… was unexpected. Sure, he was cute. But… _goddamnit._

"You with us, Chief?" he questioned, a hand on her shoulder.

She nodded then the world started spinning. "I'll be with you in a sec." She unlatched her helmet and tugged it off, blaming the ringing in her ears and the dizziness for the sudden hormonal shift. Almost getting blown up by your commanding officer will do that to you. She was sure of it. Yeah.

Filing away her feelings ( _or whatever_ )—she would have time to be girly later, and maybe she could find some Jorge to relieve her…frustration during the next Liberty—she focused her attention on Shepard. The Commander hadn't budged yet. Ash eyed her with concern. The older woman was still glowing with dark energy, and Ash's HUD showed that she still breathing. That counted for something right?

"Kaidan, there's a medical station around the corner," Tali told him coming back with what appeared to be an upgrade kit. Kaidan mentally kicked himself. He hadn't even made sure the area was secure. What the hell kind of leader—?

"Any more hostiles?" he asked, mentally cutting off is inner tirade. He had to focus. He couldn't get bogged down by self-doubt. His team needed him. Shepard needed him. Williams needed him. And Williams looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there.

The quarian shook her head. "That grenade took out the last of them."


	10. Separation Anxiety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I humbly ask that you suspend your disbelief for a while longer. Seeing as no one has really described what a bio-amp looks like or how the omni-tools actually work in fics (that I know of—any recs?), I thought I would give it a go._
> 
> _Techno-babble, aweigh! Long paragraphs, ahoy!_

The building seemed to shift as a gust of wind rammed the side of the tall Prothean-built sky scraper. The building creaked and groaned unnaturally against the low howl of the air current. Dust filtered down from the crumbling ceiling, glazing the tops of their helmets and the prone form of the Commander in silicate. Ash shuddered. These things had been there for fifty thousand years. It was a nice place to visit, but she wouldn't want to live here. Looking down at the fallen Commander, the Gunnery Chief revised her thinking. _Scratch that. It's not a nice place to visit._

The room smelled like battery acid, smoke, and mass accelerator vapor. All weapons used mass accelerator technology, and it seemed even the geth used the tech. When ever the microcomputer shaved off a piece of ammo, the smell it produced was a pungent cross between axle grease and ozone. The vapor was a smell she took pleasure in. It meant her gun was working. And that meant she was still alive. There was another lingering odor she couldn't place. The closest she could come to the smell was boiling cabbage. But there didn't seem to be any vegetation anywhere, so it confused her. The cabbage smell reminded Ash of a time when she had taken some Liberty to visit home and Sarah's boyfriend had burned cabbage imported from Mindoir. Mom had been less than thrilled. That stuff was expensive.

She mentally shook her head at where her mind had suddenly wandered to. But it wasn't as if she could do anything to help. Ash was a soldier—infantry. Hell, her first combat experience had been Eden Prime and only because they were invaded for the beacon. She had basic first aid training and had only just recently completed her heavy hardsuit rating—and yeah, she was looking forward to the pay raise. But Alenko was the team's medic. And he knew a hell of lot more about biotics than she did. He was one after all.

The others had disbursed; it was just Lieutenant Alenko—helmet off, kneeling, Omni-tool out—and Ash—helmet on, standing, feeling out of place. Vakarian and Nar Rayya had gone to check out the medical equipment in the back area. Hopefully, they would find something that would be of some use. If they weren't planning a mutiny behind their backs.

Wrex was guarding the only exit with what she thought might have been a look of boredom. Or he was just standing there looking menacing? _Or something._ She'd already witnessed the krogan gun down someone in cold blood-for cash no less. She wouldn't put it past him to do it again. And who knew if the Shadow Broker had paid him to keep tabs on the first human Spectre? That _had_ been his employer, right?

"Is there anything we can do for her, sir?" she asked as she put her thoughts away—though still kept an eye on Wrex—and knelt beside the Lieutenant. The amber glow of his omni-tool cast shadows on their faces and over the still unconscious form of Commander Shepard. Alenko's eyes were whiskey-colored under the light, and it highlighted the fine lines around his eyes and mouth, the deeper line across his forehead, aging him with worry. It also highlighted a miniscule scar on his cheekbone that wasn't noticeable under normal lighting. She found herself wondering where and how he had gotten it.

He shook his head drawing her thoughts back to the conversation. "All her readings are normal. Just a fever." He was quiet a moment as he gingerly removed Shepard's helmet, taking care not to move her neck too much. He didn't know if he should be worried that she was still glowing with dark energy or that she was still unconscious. Or that the dark energy flowed around his hands as he worked, making his skin prickle underneath his gloves. She'd been out for almost seven minutes now. Her chopped hair was sweat-slicked and stuck to her face, but he did nothing about it, though his fingers itched to comb it out of her eyes.

"I've never seen any biotic extend their barrier. Ever," he told Williams quietly, leaning Shepard's head against his armor-encased knee facing the Chief, making sure that the unconscious woman stayed on her side as he didn't want to risk further injury to her back while her hardsuit's ceramic plates were as cracked as they were, and as casually as he could, tucked a few strands behind her ear so that he could better see her face. "Not even an asari."

He knew the Chief didn't know the first thing about biotics. After all, she had asked all those questions when they first met. But as weird as she was about aliens, she didn't seem all that intimidated by the fact that he was a biotic with a mutated nervous system and—according to some of the extremist vids—killed people with his thoughts and ate babies for breakfast. It was one of the things he liked about her. He could actually be himself around her instead of just some weird, L2-he-may-go-crazy-any-minute superior officer. It was the same reason—only modified for a biotic and his CO—that he liked the Commander.

If he had a sister, he would want her to be like Williams. Unfortunately, exposure to eezo had left his mother only capable of carrying to term one child. And that was him. It was no wonder that after he and his father had convinced Mom that he wouldn't kill everybody with his brain that she was so overprotective of him. Hell, maybe one of these days he would find a nice civilian girl and give his mother the grandchildren she so desperately wanted. He mentally snorted at that just as soon as the thought surfaced. They were still studying human biotics. They didn't even know what indirect exposures would do to children, and he sure as hell wasn't about to experiment just to please his mother. The statistics were not good for anyone with exposure to eezo. The only time he didn't feel lucky to be alive was when the migraines hit or a crew member watched him eat.

"I bet she's gonna wake up with one bitch of a headache," the Chief commented, trying to make light of it. He only gave her a noncommittal grunt. She needed to stay out of his head. It weirded him out.

"Two human hardsuits in the medical station, Lieutenant," Garrus reported, tossing the white-shelled and magenta hardsuits down. They clacked against the dirt-covered, Prothean-made metal floor. He kneeled beside the fallen Commander and her human subordinates. "Easiest decryption I've ever seen." Kaidan felt Williams bristle from beside him but refrained from saying anything, only gave Garrus a polite nod of thanks.

"Debug them. Tali, give him a hand. The Commander and the Chief need another set," he ordered absently as he continued to interface with Shepard's armor. Still nothing. She was running a low-grade fever, and she had slipped into REM, the movement of her eyes beneath her closed lids eerily unsettling.

The blast had turned her two rifles into slag. He handed them off to Williams to keep her occupied. There was a pensive shimmer in the shadow of her eyes. He would deal with it later. His priority right now was to see to it that their commanding officer was functional. "Gel these. Check if anyone needs patches."

Ash did as told, field stripping the rifles to the best of her ability given that they were little more than melted plastic and metal now, getting irritated when the sniper scope wouldn't dislodge from the barrel. She grunted and thwacked it on the ground a few times. When it still didn't come off, she shrugged and flipped on her Omni-tool, cursed when the barrel wouldn't fit into the fabricator. She rarely used her tool, and, in fact, the Bluewire was in dire straits. The holographic interface flickered in places. She was deeply envious of Alenko's Logic Arrest. _Damn nerd._ The fabricator was larger, the sensor array was better designed, and the computer was slightly slower than the speed of God. _No fair._ Her only consolation was that her gun was bigger.

She didn't know if she should be pleased or irritated when the quarian snatched the scope from her hand and gelled it with her Cipher, whose fabricator wasn't as big as the Logic Arrest, but was larger than her Bluewire. Ash was not going to say thank you. The quarian didn't seem too put out that she didn't. _Damn alien. If it weren't for her damn species…_ The quarian put the omni-gel in a compartment in her boot and sat crossed legged next to the turian with a hard-suit on her lap, completely engrossed in the technology. She interfaced it with her Omni-tool. Quarian letters and numbers scrolled across the reflection on her mask.

"Shepard's neck is burned," Garrus observed as Shepard's dark energy glow finally dissipated, drawing everyone's attention.

 _Holy Hell._ "The amp," Kaidan breathed, quickly pulling out a medi-gel pack and tearing it open. The skin around the implant jack at the base of Shepard's skull was red and puckered, peeling in places. "Second-degree burn." Checking the bio-amp, he made a mental note to see if Burns had access to something that would withstand her power. It was in worse shape than her guns. The melted black of the Solaris X drooped over the outer rim of the implant jack—the cause of the burns on her neck. A Solaris X was obviously not cut out to take the kind of abuse Shepard had put it through. And he was sure the _Normandy_ quartermaster didn't have anything but standard-issue Aldrin Labs crap. Standard-issue Alliance gear was not good for a Spectre. Maybe they would be able to go back to the Citadel and stop by the requisitions officer at C-Sec.

But he could see the reasoning behind choosing the Solaris X. The Commander's bio-amplifier of choice was nothing more than a computer chip on a standard seven-and-a-half centimeter by five millimeter implant jack. It resembled a large black thumb tack with a thick head housing the microcomputer, and it was nearly invisible under Shepard's thick, dark hair. There were no external wires that would catch on anything like on the amp he chose, a turian-made Gemini VII. His amp was actually clipped into his helmet. If he took off the helmet, he had to be careful to unclip it or risk jerking the plug out of his skull—which was not a pleasant experience if the amp was still on. He preferred the Gemini to his old Solaris because it allowed him to use more power and not get as tired as quickly. Not to mention the static discharge wasn't as painful if he happened to touch metal barehanded. The Commander needed him at the top of his game and his model was most he could purchase at the moment.

As he leaned forward to study her, her body began to twitch. _That's not REM sleep._

"What's wrong with her?" Tali questioned, her voice sounding panicky.

"Get that amp out before it fries her brain," Wrex ordered gruffly. Kaidan looked up owlishly. When had the krogan come back over? He wondered.

"I can't just rip it out," he argued. "The heat grafted it to her skin. My kit only has medi-gel. I'm a medic, not a surgeon."

Her body twitched harder this time, alarming everyone. Williams moved to hold her down.

"Yeah?" Wrex questioned. He pointed at Shepard as she began to flail. "Flesh heals. Brains don't. Seems to me that the Commander would rather have her brain than her skin. Use the medi-gel after you un-plug her." Kaidan could have sworn the krogan finished the sentence with "Stupid human," but didn't press the subject.

Williams glared daggers at the krogan. "We should get her back to the ship," she insisted.

If a krogan could roll his eyes, Wrex probably did. "Great morale booster for the colonists," he remarked dryly. "Let's drag humanity's first Spectre back to the ship while she twitches and drools. I bet the colonists would fight after that."

Kaidan unplugged the OSD that was interfacing with Shepard's hardsuit. Wrex was right. He handed it to Garrus. "Monitor her," he commanded.

Garrus nodded solemnly and powered up his Omni-tool. Kaidan ripped off his gloves and fought for purchase on the amp. It was still hot. Without regard to the pain that sliced him, he managed to get his fingers under it and unplugged the melted amplifier. The redened skin peeled away as he removed it for good.

Shepard gasped, her eyes opening immediately, though she remained very stiff and very still.

"Williams?" she demanded, hoarsely.

Ash reached out and clutched the Commander's arm even as relief flooded her. "Here, Commander." Shepard's eyes cut to her face and she breathed in relief.

The Commander winced. "Sitrep," she ordered as she sat up, her eyes darting to Kaidan's face.

He filled her in, adding, "The only thing that's good on your hardsuit is the medical interface, but Garrus found two sets of armors. He and Tali are inspecting them now."

Shepard looked down at her gray armor that was chipped all over from the blast. "So much for the ablative coating," she mused. She allowed Kaidan apply medi-gel to her burn, the gel taking away all sensation immediately. The minor burns to his fingers were immediately soothed as well.

"Dr. Chakwas should have a look at you," he told her. "My equipment says you've got a fever but everything else is normal. Garrus?"

Garrus handed the OSD back to Kaidan. "All appears normal. Even the implant." Kaidan placed the OSD back in its place within the medkit on his right wrist.

"I feel like hammered shit," Shepard supplied, putting a hand to her head. He didn't think she looked like hammered shit. She looked tired and beautiful and her hair was mussed, but—thankfully—his mouth didn't run away with him this time. He was just worried enough to keep his mouth closed.

"There is nothing wrong with this hardsuit," Tali announced. She handed off the heavy grade Phoenix armor to Williams who immediately walked behind the wall to change.

Shepard accepted the medium grade Phoenix armor from Garrus with a nod before looking Kaidan straight in the eye and surprising him. "Help me get out of this, will you?"

Kaidan was struck by the surreal feeling. He was going to field strip his superior officer. He nodded, ignoring the awkward way his fingers fumbled on the latches of her armor. Ignoring the way the coating chipped and the sound it made as it hit the floor and his boots as he gently peeled back the plating over her arms and chest. Ignoring the way his pulse raced at the sight of the black insular cloth as it clung to her curves. Ignoring the way his breathing hitched when he unzipped the back of the inner cloth armor to reveal the creamy texture of her skin.

He swallowed hard, averting his gaze as she leaned on him to shrug into the new hardsuit's magenta fabric armor. He didn't have his gloves on, so when he steadied her… _My God._ Her skin was a soft at it looked. She tapped him in the chest to get his attention. He zipped her back up and helped her with the chest plate, latching it beneath her breasts on either side to the back. Kaidan knew she could put on a hardsuit in under three minutes, and chalked up her inability to coordinate to the biofeedback she must have gotten from the amp. He wondered if there was any internal damage.

"Do I have any weapons left?" she asked in a quiet murmur as Williams reentered the area in brand new armor. It didn't surprise either one that the Chief had opted to keep her old scored, gore-encrusted helmet. Marines could be superstitious about their brain boxes like that.

He shook his head. "Let's check back with Fai Dan and then see if they have a shopkeeper or if they can spare anything."

"Garrus, Tali, you have point," Shepard commanded. "Williams, Wrex, bring up the rear. Alenko, you've got my back."

 _Always._ "Yes, ma'am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Trivia/Geekery:** Americanese: 3 inches = 7.6 centimeters according to an online calculator. Just so you know. Bio-amp overload idea inspired by one of **sinvraal's** fics. (And there’s something wrong with you, if you haven’t read anything by sinvraal yet. She’s amazing.)_


	11. Testicular Fortitude

Kaidan kneeled before the woman who was in obvious pain, the medical scanner on his omni-tool active. Her husband looked defensive.

"She's fine," the older man insisted. "She just…needs to accept things."

"She's not suffering from any type of injury, Commander," Kaidan confirmed, looking back to meet Shepard's worried gaze. Her odd-colored eyes bored into his. "No reading of anything abnormal, ma'am."

The Commander nodded once. This mission was fucked from the beginning.

_Should have gotten here sooner. Damn Saren. What the hell is here that is so damned important? Is it another beacon?_

The thought brought her very little comfort, and with a frustrated grunt, Shepard made her way out of the freighter, irritated that things were going so… She stopped and turned, eying her hodgepodge shore party. The mixed ground team was right on her heels. She quickly made a decision, eying each of them, weighing their strengths.

It was the only way.

"Lieutenant."

Alenko was there, taking a step forward, ready to do her bidding. Dependable. "Ma'am?"

"Wrex and Tali are going with me to the main encampment," she told him, and his eyebrows shot up. "You, Garrus and Williams, get the colony up running again. They need food, water and power."

"You—only the three of you?" he asked, his mouth a hard line of concern.

She nodded. "These people need help, Kaidan."

Kaidan regarded her a moment, a little unnerved that she'd addressed him by his first name in front of the others. "Agreed, ma'am." She didn't think he was questioning her, did she? "I'm not disagreeing with your orders, Commander. I'm only concerned—" He tapped a finger to his helmet.

It was her turn to regard him. Her voice was calm. "It takes more than a little amp to bring me down, Lieutenant."

"I have no doubt, ma'am. At least take a few marines with you."

She shook her head. "I'm not losing anyone else, Alenko." Her voice was firm.

* * *

Kinetic barriers were designed to automatically intensify when they came into contact with a projectile that surpassed a certain speed. When Kaidan's shields came on and he felt the impact of a slug against the Scorpion armor, he didn't have time to mentally curse himself for not installing the shielding mod that was still in his locker. He didn't have time to do anything but react when his mind registered the fact that he was under fire. It happened in a split second. One moment, he, Williams and Garrus were lugging the Alpha Varren's carcass out of the sewers, the next they were dodging mass accelerated rounds.

"Protect the Heart of the Colony!"

Kaidan reacted as he had been trained to and had been doing for the last sixteen years: automatically, forcing the nodules of his mutated nervous system to react and enforce his hard suit's shielding. _Right foot over left, right hand thrust and then across._ Glowing in unnatural dark energy, his other hand already held his Kessler.

Another slug bit into his shields as he dove for cover, pressing Williams and Garrus back behind the wall. The slug didn't make it past his barrier.

"The colonists are shooting at us!" Garrus shouted his two-tone voice incredulous.

A million questions surfaced as Kaidan thought of what to do. He pressed Williams closer to Garrus, heedless of her reaction to the proximity to the turian, as a round ricocheted off the wall near his helmeted head.

"What the hell is going on?" she demanded. Yeah. That pretty much summed up most of his questions. Now, finding an answer was the problem.

"Do we take them down?" Garrus asked, trading one rifle for the other.

"Oh, yeah," Williams retorted vehemently, getting in the turian's face, "you would enjoy that wouldn't you, turian?"

Garrus blinked his tiny eyes at her, developing what appeared to be a baffled expression, his mandibles flaring. "They're shooting at you too, Gunnery Chief Williams."

His point was brought home by one especially zealous colonist who didn't let up on the firing mechanism of her pistol. "Kill them!"

"I have no idea, what the hell is going," Kaidan called out over the din of weapons fire, "but fall back. We're not taking on these people. There's got to be an explanation."

"But—" Garrus began.

"I gave an order, Garrus," Kaidan told him. "I'm in charge while the Commander's at the main encampment. Like it or not, we're heading to the tower. Complain to her when she gets back."

"If we make it that long," Williams murmured. She gazed at him. "Should we even try for the ship, sir?"

He shook his head. "I'm not risking our lives either, Williams."

" _Normandy_ to Shore Party," Joker's voice cut across the comms, "Alenko, we've got trouble."

"Shore Party here," Kaidan acknowledged as they slowly inched away from the entryway, keeping down away from the slugs that were slamming into the building.

"Someone's beating on the airlock, Alenko," Joker announced.

"Uh." Kaidan's mind raced. The colonists were attacking the ship? "Don't let 'em in. Lock it down and sit tight. Have you been able to reach the Commander?"

"Negative. Whatever's blocking the transmissions is still in place."

Kaidan gestured for his teammates to keep moving. "Keep trying."

"Yes, sir. Watch your six, Alenko. _Normandy_ out."

"Well, that was productive," Williams commented dryly, a small smile gracing her lips. His eyes cut to hers just as the color drained from her face, her eyes widening a fraction. Without prompting, she grabbed Kaidan by the arm and pulled him closer. "Get down!"

The shoulder injury from the geth hopper's slugs the day before tore open against the medi-gel holding it, fire and ice shooting across Kaidan's shoulder and down his arm. Williams, oblivious of Kaidan's injury, slung him into Garrus and opened fire on whatever was standing in Kaidan's previous position. Whatever it was, moaned as the sound of sledgehammer rounds tearing flesh hit Kaidan's ears. He turned just in time to see it fall.

"What the hell was that?" Garrus asked, the flanging of his voice more evident with alarm.

A humanoid with wrinkled translucent flesh lay oozing dark blood. Its mouth was agape, seeping a black tar-like substance. The eyes were lidless. The black fluid also flowed freely from the nearly empty sockets. The face was mottled and the entire creature appeared to be decaying. Bile rose in Kaidan's throat at the sight and the stench. _My God._ This… was worse than turnips. It was more like—

" _Normandy_ to Shore Party!" Joker sounded desperate. "Shore Party! Come in!"

Kaidan blinked, swallowing. "Alenko here." He shook his head. There had to be some way to get the smell out. He couldn't afford to get a migraine now. Williams and Garrus needed him.

"There are zombies!" Kaidan nearly laughed at the tone of the pilot's voice.

"'Zombies?'" Garrus asked, "what are—"

"Say again?" Kaidan inquired as Williams nudged the dead creature with the toe of her boot. The tip of her white boot came back with black ooze, and she made a face.

"There are zombies outside the ship." Joker sounded just as incredulous as he did before. "It's like some damn horror vid. I can't reach the Commander. Pressly agrees with the lockdown. Where are you?"

"Keep trying to contact the Commander," Kaidan ordered then looked at Williams and Garrus. "We're going to hunker down in the tower. Keep the ship on lockdown. Have the Commander comm. us when she gets back."

"I knew these colonists were acting weird," Ash told them as they raced up the stairs. She knocked one of the zombie-like creatures down the stairs. It tumbled, knocking down several more in the process. _God, these things are creepy._

"What's wrong with your people, Fai Dan?" Ash had questioned at one point. They had just gotten done taking out geth in the sewer and turning on the water, the sun was setting on the first day. "They're acting really fucking weird."

Fai Dan had only looked at her. "We have been through much, Chief Williams."

Kaidan had put a stop to the conversation, but not before his security chief, Arcelia, had her piece. "Where were you anyway?"

"We had no idea—"

"Chief, it's late," Kaidan had interrupted. He looked at Fai Dan. "We weren't able to find the Alpha Varren today; we'll try again tomorrow. We have enough rations for your people for tonight, Fai Dan. Will that do?"

"Check with Davin Reynolds," was all Fai Dan had said.

Kaidan had all but dragged Chief away, latching on to her arm like she were a child under his care instead of the capable marine he knew her to be. This mission was taking its toll on all of them. Even Garrus had been pissy with him that day.

"I can't believe she blames us!" Ash had blurted.

He looked down at her, finally releasing her arm. "Let's try to be a little more diplomatic, Williams."

"But—"

"Wasn't a request. Take Garrus and get back to the ship. Tell Pressly to assemble the quartermaster and Burns. I'll be there shortly." He had turned and stalked off, leaving Ash to carry out his orders. When he had arrived back at the ship Pressly, Quartermaster Livens and Req. Officer Burns were waiting for him in the Comm. Room. Together they had gathered the necessary rations and water and had gone out to deliver them to Reynolds.

Now here they were coming back with a power cell and the carcass of the Alpha Varren and the colonists were attacking them. With mother fucking zombies. _What the hell?_

Ash growled as she changed weapons. A shot gun would serve her best.

"Fall back," Alenko ordered. "At least we won't have to worry about these things flanking us."

"We'll have our backs to the wall," Garrus argued.

"Don't question my orders, Garrus," the Lieutenant said heatedly, firing a few shots in the face of the creeper that was about to spew green vomit on him. "You could get us all killed. Now let's go."

* * *

Tali did a little dance when the cargo bay doors snapped the claws holding the geth ship in place. It was a pleasing sound as it fell to its doom.

"This was my kind of mission," Wrex proclaimed with what appeared to be a smile across his weathered, scaly face, "Kill a bunch of geth and end with a huge crash."

"Thought you might enjoy this more than patching up a colony," Shepard told him with a smile. She turned to Tali, shouldering her shot gun. "Tali, can you hack that geth terminal while we're waiting for the comms to realign?"

Tali snorted indelicately. "With my eyes closed." She was already making her way towards the familiar-looking device.

"Don't show off," Shepard told her. "I want to know what their next move is."

The quarian said nothing, powering up her omni-tool and loading the specially designed OSD into the drive. The terminal was an average decrypt, nothing hard. The OSD did its job well and in a matter of seconds, the terminal was open and squawking at her. A chill ran down her spine as the geth codes passed over her retinas. She swore in her native tongue.

"Commander, this—the geth… they're—"

"I repeat, _Normandy_ to Shore Party, are you reading?" Joker's voice cut across the comms suddenly as their hardsuits' systems finally realigned themselves after the jamming from the geth ship was cut off. "Come on, Commander, talk to me!"

Shepard blinked, a smile forming on her lips. It was good to hear Joker's voice. Although it sounded strained. "Is that you, Joker? What's going on over there?"

She stood motionless in the middle of the room, too shocked at his next words. "We're in lockdown here, Commander. Something happened to the colonists." Shepard knew immediately what was going on. The Thorian was using the colonists. And Alenko, Williams and Garrus had been exposed to the spores. "They're banging on the hull, trying to claw their way into the ship. They're freaking out!"

"Hold your position," she told him, her mind reeling. ExoGeni had a lot to answer for. Starting with Lizbeth Baynham. "They can't do any real damage. Where's Alenko's team?"

"Not here, Commander," Joker reported and Shepard was already moving, her two alien teammates on her heels. "The colonists opened fire on them half an hour ago. They're hunkered down in the tower."

Shepard cursed, picked up speed. "Hold your position," she repeated. "We're on our way."

* * *

Lizbeth Baynham stood and rushed down the ramp to her mother. "Get away from her, you son of bitch!"

The scientist surged towards where Ethan Jeong and his security team were holding the elder Baynham.

"Damn it," Shepard swore. Her copper eyes cut to Wrex's blood-red ones. She shook her head at him when he gestured with his shot gun.

"Come out where I can see you!" Jeong ordered. "All of you!"

Wrex gave a gruff laugh as Shepard stood, shooting him a cheeky grin back. So that didn't work. There were other ways to take care of bean counters.

"Shepard," Jeong murmured. "Damn it." The Commander strolled down the ramp, Tali and Wrex following suit. "I knew it was too much to hope the geth would kill you."

_Damn bean counter._

* * *

"Lieutenant Alenko, do you copy?"

Kaidan was never more thrilled to hear Shepard's silvery voice in his ear. "Aye, Commander."

"What's your twenty?"

"Zhu's Hope tower, ma'am." He looked over at Williams. The chief looked as relieved as he felt. "Garrus and the Chief are with me. Orders, Commander?"

"Make your way down, Lieutenant," she commanded. "Rendezvous with us at the elevator. We'll be there in five."

"Aye, aye, ma'am." He looked at Williams and Garrus as they added heat sinks to their weapons. "What about the colonists, Commander?"

"Don't hurt them. They're being controlled by spores of some kind of plant ExoGeni was studying. They're the control group."

"Uh," was the most intelligent thing he could think to utter. Control group? Spores? _Human experimentation?_ He thought Conatix was bad. He shook off the anger that abruptly made his stomach sour.

"We've been with the colonists for a day and a half!" Williams cried suddenly as the implications sank in. "Are we in danger, ma'am?"

The Commander's voice was bleak. "I don't know, Williams. Any signs of wanting to attack me if I go after the Thorian?"

"The what?" Garrus asked.

"The Thorian," Shepard said, "the life form. It's old. And it probably was here when the Protheans were. Look, just meet us at the elevator."

The group of three did as told, picking their way past the bodies of the Thorian's thralls as they lay decaying on the stairs from their earlier attack.

"The old growth," Garrus remarked unexpectedly as they rounded the stairwell.

Williams nodded. "Don't listen to it, turian. I'll put a round through your head if you do. It's as good as dead."

Garrus was silent. Kaidan didn't think that was a good thing. He didn't want to think about the Turian Agent turning on them. Not in battle. Not ever. Garrus was a hothead when it came to following orders, but the turian was also good at what he did. He was an asset to their team.

And Ash had already made clear her intentions if Garrus were to turn. Kaidan didn't think he would be able to stop her, orders or no.

Kaidan started at that. When had Williams become Ash in his mind? He shook it off. Now was not the time. The sound of gun fire caught his attention.

Shepard had stepped off the elevator and more colonists had attacked her and her team. She was relieved to see Alenko, Williams and Garrus round the corner from the stairs.

"I've got ten gas grenades," she told them even as they ducked for cover as the colonists resumed their assault. "It'll neutralize them, but not hurt them." She studied Garrus a moment. He was looking around oddly, his beady gray eyes glassy. "Garrus, you okay?"

"I—I—No, Commander," he admitted, shook his head. "There's—there's pain."

 _Damn it._ "Get back to the ship, disarm and report to Chakwas," she ordered immediately, handing off a grenade to the krogan. "Wrex, go with. Use this if you have to. No slugs."

"Damn, Shepard, you take the fun out of everything," the krogan grumbled.

* * *

"Creepers," Williams said evenly as Betty Bitchbox announced their arrival on the _Normandy_ , and they went through D-Con. She gritted her teeth and looked ready to throttle him. This argument had been going on for a day and a half now. Her new armor was covered in black and green goop and spattered with gore from one of the colonists that Kaidan had been forced to shoot as they were going for the damned Thorian. Even though he had aimed for a non-vital part, he couldn't remember feeling so guilty. He had been forced to shoot a _civilian_. Being hit with a slug going relativistic speeds was enough to splatter any thing—no matter that it was only the man's arm.

As D-Con continued around the four teammates, Kaidan felt prickly all over, even under his armor. As always when they went through the process, he felt the need to strip and scratch. _When in doubt, burn the fuckers out_ , he thought morbidly even as he argued with Williams.

"But they don't creep." The Lieutenant was of the mind that it took more than two legs to "creep". And he was just tired and irritated enough with the situation to argue his point. Williams was of the mind that they were "creepy". It didn't justify their name.

"Creepers," she insisted as Betty told everyone that XO Pressly stood relieved and another itching sensation came over him as the UV light passed over him yet again. He hated D-Con almost as much as turnips.

Hell, he hated everything right now.

Turnips. The words "creep", "creeping", "creeper", and "creepy". Williams. Guns. Varren. Blood. Green. Childbirth. Vegetables. Wrex. D-Con. Gas Bags. Bio-amps. Omni-tools. Joker.

Turnips.

Hated everything.

He frowned down at her. "What the hell is wrong with 'zombies'?" he finally asked, exasperated. The Thorian's thralls looked like something out of a zombie vid. They smelled like rotten vegetables ruminating in pickle juice. Yeah. It would be a while before Kaidan ate anything green. The thought of food made him want to puke. And he really wanted to blow his nose hoping that it would get the smell out. He was certain that the Thorian's juice— _or whatever the fuck_ that _was_ —and the exploding thralls' black goop had gotten stuck in his nose hairs. Even D-Con wasn't burning that out.

"Creepers," Shepard intoned apparently fed up with her subordinates. Her tone brooked no argument.

He bit the inside of his cheek as she saucily grinned at him over her shoulder where she stood in beside Tali.

"Yes, ma'am," he relinquished. He needed to blow his nose, a hot shower and at least twelve hours sleep. Both women were getting on his nerves, and snapping at his commanding officer would probably land him in the brig right now. She was just as irritable as he was. Snapping at Williams would probably land a knee to his groin and that was just as bad as getting sent to the brig, armor or no. The idea itself made him nauseous.

So he allowed the conversation to lapse as he absently stared at pattern on the back of Tali's head and thought back on the last three days. The Thorian, the old growth… It was older than anything he had ever seen. And now Shepard had the information they needed to interpret at least some of the information from the Eden Prime Beacon.

"Are we going to check out the Maroon Sea, Shepard?" Tali asked as the _Normandy_ 's airlock opened and Kaidan snapped back to the present. "I don't think any kind of samples from this place would be necessarily a 'good' thing. Saren takes priority, but…" She trailed off. "What happened to these people, I wouldn't wish on anyone."

Shepard shrugged. "It wouldn't hurt." Gaining the Cipher was taking its toll on her. Dark circles rimmed her eyes. Kaidan was certain that she hadn't gotten much sleep while they had been separated for a day and a half. Her next few sentences proved it. "We'll see what's next after the debriefing. I just want some sleep right now. Debrief in forty-five minutes, ladies and gentleman. Williams, Alenko, mission reports in thirty." She turned towards the bridge. "Joker, get us the hell out of here. Geo-sync until we figure out where we're headed."

Joker responded with a whole-hearted, "You got it."


	12. Neuroses

Commander Shepard was sitting at the mess table when the bells sounded. Kaidan rounded the bulkhead and was startled to see her sitting there, elbow on the table, cheek in her palm, index finger of her opposite hand tracing invisible patterns on the metal table. Usually she was on the bridge or CIC at this time, and he wondered what she was doing there. He also wondered when it was that he started keeping up with her schedule. They'd known each other for less than three weeks now.

He cleared his throat to get her attention. When she looked up at him, her eyes were dull. He immediately crossed the threshold into the mess and sat beside her, noting the darkness under her eyes. Ever since she and her team had returned from the sky way, she had looked rough. He hadn't been able to get any information out of Wrex. He might as well been talking to a wall. A wall of scaly muscle. Tali had only relayed the information Shepard had included in her report, including the hacked terminal and nearly getting killed by a gun-wielding Jeong.

And having an alien culture downloaded to her brain probably hadn't helped matters any. At least she looked one hundred percent better after that ordeal. He truly thought she may faint after the asari commando, Shi'ala, had stepped away.

"Commander?" he questioned.

She smiled warily. "Kaidan."

"Are you—are you alright, ma'am?"

Before she could answer, Williams rounded the corner with two trays of food, setting one in front of Shepard, who dug in immediately not bothering to answer his question right away.

"You try getting your brain fried and then melding with an asari commando," she told him in between mouthfuls. "And then having to keep from killing a bunch of mind controlled civilians." It was quiet a moment while she gulped her drink. "Opinions?"

 _One out of three_. They'd all had to avoid the colonists while getting slimed by the Thorian Creepers things. And he still felt guilty about Reynolds. Especially after the Thorian was taken care of and Reynolds _wife_ had been the one to patch both her husband and Kaidan up.

Kaidan thought Shepard may have asked only to change the subject, but Williams dutifully informed her, "Gotta admire those colonials. That's about the worst place for a colony I've ever seen. Given the option, I'd get the hell out of dodge. Especially now that they're cut off from ExoGeni."

"I'm glad there aren't many aliens like the Thorian," he intoned. "I don't think my stomach could take it." He was still sick. Watching an alien plant give birth to an asari was the most horrific thing he had ever seen. And he was a Marine. If he ever did get around to giving his mom grandkids, he sure as hell wasn't going to sit in on the whole birthing process. God. The smell. He shuddered. Even though his stomach was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it was time for food, he ignored it. Food tasted a hell of lot better going down than it did coming back up and marine rations tasted worse both ways.

"Hey, commander, the next time we touch down, let's try not to park the ship in a colony of mutant zombies," Joker said as he hobbled up to the table. He shuddered and shook his head. "Just thinking out loud here."

Shepard snorted. "Could have been worse."

"Like what?" he challenged, raising a brow.

She looked right back at him and didn't bat an eye. "Threshers in the middle of the colony. Fifty-one marines pounding dirt. Only one comes back."

Williams looked at her food. Alenko's eyes were anywhere but on the Commander. Joker shut the hell up and hobbled to the galley to fix his chow. Same shit. Same shingle. When he came back his green eyes gazed at the marines, assessing their moods-they were just as fowl as they had been fifteen hours ago after coming on board and smelling like garbage. _Well, this'll be interesting._ Shepard was almost done with her meal. It was the messiest Joker had ever seen her. Crumbs littered the table; there was gray gravy on her chin; and her hands were shaking as she shoveled food in her mouth. She didn't seem to care that anyone else was around. Unlike Alenko, who looked green around the gills. Joker secretly hoped she would get some on the biotic. It would be an interesting experience. He wondered if Alenko would sit there like a good marine or run like a girl. Or just throw up. _Maybe he'll scream like a girl, run and puke._ Alenko was incredibly fun to play with when it came to food.

Williams was picking at her chow. It looked like applesauce was the meat identifier which made the gray meat she was picking at some kind of pork. _Ew. Space pork._ Unless Williams was doing the porking… Joker firmly put that idea away. Flirting aside, he had better things to do than think about a damn _MaRINE_. He had his hand and his sock. And it wasn't like he was specifically born to breed. Shattering a hip while fucking didn't particularly appeal to him. Getting head however…

"So what did the Council have to say about your report?" he asked, reigning in his thoughts and tired of the eerie quiet that had settled over the mess. That and he really wanted to know.

"Basically that I'm abusing my Spectre privileges by assisting my own kind, and they wanted to study the Thorian," Shepard told them. All three looked at her as though she had sprouted another head. She shrugged. "We'll be picking up the matriarch's daughter. I want her opinions on the information that was downloaded to my brain."

"Rumor has it that you had awesome asari sex," Joker accused pointing his spork at the Commander. Shepard choked and looked scandalized. Kaidan glared at the man for being so disrespectful. Williams stifled a laugh that ended up becoming a snort.

She blinked. "If that was sex, that was the worst sex ever," she commented dryly. "I got the entire Prothean history and culture downloaded to my damn brain." She thought about it for a moment. "And anyway, there was no touching. No sex." She took a bite.

"What about the Consort?" Kaidan wondered out loud. Shepard spit out her food and glared at him.

"We're not even going there." Shepard shuddered. "God, she was all hands," she all but whined. Williams didn't bother to hide her laugh this time, and Kaidan couldn't help but smirk.

"What happened with the Consort?" Joker wanted to know with a raised eyebrow. Wasn't that an asari prostitute on the Citadel?

Shepard dug around her collar and came up with a strange looking pendant. "I got this for my troubles and a bunch of words that will probably never make any sense to me. If she'd propositioned me for sex, I probably would have thrown her in the lake. Alenko looked like he wanted to when she grabbed his ass."

Joker snorted, filed the information away for later. _Ah, blackmail._ Alenko had the good will to look scandalized.

"She had some good advice, Commander," Kaidan said trying to hide his blush.

"Above my pay grade," was all Shepard said before shoving another mouthful of food down her gullet. At least she looked better. Her eyes weren't so dull.

"So what was it like?" Williams asked suddenly, and tapped her temple with a slender finger indicating the mind meld with Shi'ala.

Kaidan frowned, his dark eyes flashed a gentle but firm warning to the Chief. Wasn't that a personal question? An intimate question? He didn't like the idea of Shepard being intimate with anyone. And that bothered him more than he liked to admit.

Shepard drank deeply from her mug, then sat it down and considered the question. "It was…" She paused, collecting her thoughts. She knew what it wasn't. It wasn't pleasant and it had been painful, like the beacon on Eden Prime. And Shi'ala hadn't made it any less painful. Whispers ghosted across her conciousness every time she thought about the connection she had made with the asari commando. It wasn't something she would willing do again.

"Well," she told them finally, her eyes shifting from one person to the other, "it-it was really fucking weird. Voices, sensations. And it hurt like hell." She shuddered, remembering. She lowered her thick black lashes, studied her plate. It seemed only then that she realized the mess she made. "Like waking up after brain surgery."

Kaidan paled. He was the only one in the room that knew what that was like.

"Like 'thousands suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced'?" Joker inquired. She raised her eyes to find him watching her, his face a façade of neutrality.

She rolled her eyes as she brushed the crumbs from the table to the floor. Roomba 2340X was there immediately to vacuum them up. "If you can shut them up, you're welcome to try." She gave a shrug as she watched the little robot do its thing and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She wiped at her chest, flicking crumbs at Kaidan. He silently thanked every deity he knew to thank that he had not gotten a tray. There was no way he would be able to eat someone else's used food. He balked at the very idea, but kept his face calm and his body rigid. Besides, only Joker knew his thing about food. And damn him the pilot was about to say something!

Then she called up her omni-tool, studied it as the amber glow cast shadows across her face, then powered it down and stood, grabbing her tray.

"When you get done eating, Joker, set course for Artemis Tau. The coordinates Admiral Kahoku gave us," she ordered. "After what happened on Feros, I'm checking everything out. I don't care how obscure the lead is. We follow it. If we have to scan mother-fucking ore to look for clues, we'll do it. We can pick up the doctor on our way out of the cluster, if she's still there."

Kaidan watched as she walked away, heading for her quarters. His eyes slid over her curves before he realized what he was doing. As his brain caught up with him, he also realized what she had said.

_Ore?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Trivia/Geekery:** Quote above from Star Wars. As if no one knew that… Roomba belongs to whoever it belongs to._


	13. Archaeologists Gone Wild

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I will be up front and say that Liara is my least favorite character. I've tweaked it a bit since ME2 has come out. Liara's tentacles/head tails are skin-folds in her scalp now._
> 
>  
> 
>  _ **Many Thanks:**_ _Thank you to everyone who has been following and thank you to everyone who has left reviews/comments or has added this to their alerts. I feel honored to have given someone some kind of entertainment (whether it be laughter or outright groans of annoyance.) XD_
> 
>  _ **More Inane Ramblings:**_ _As usual, feedback is welcomed and highly appreciated, and I hope you enjoy my version of Liara. I added some author's notes at the end for info on Liara and on the Minoan eruption of Thera/Santorini—in case anyone's curious as to where I got the names of locations on Therum._

The human male was an intriguing specimen, Dr. Liara T'Soni thought as she stood in the arid heat of Therum, feeling perspiration creep from the folds in her scalp down into the back of her collar. The sulfuric odor of the local caldera hung in the air and was beginning to get the better of her. Her eyes would start to water soon if she didn't get back into the shelter of the dig site. She wished to be anywhere but there listening to the company representative explain company policies to her.

Just after the human initiated the conversation, Liara resolved herself not to say too much to anyone lest she end up embarrassing herself and inciting some kind of argument. The humans in the encampment already regarded her as a peculiarity.

Humans were an exotic species; how they looked so much like asari ( _and their hair!_ ) but were so different! And this one— _a male_ —this one was so… so colorful. Her— _his_ , Liara mentally corrected herself, _male identifiers are his, him and he: just like the salarians, turians, volus or elcor_ — _his_ skin was the color of Therum's igneous rock formations found around the excavation site. Even after meeting with them, she knew that she would have to be careful not to associate asari biological terms with the humans. The humans were reputed to be a fickle, emotional lot.

The tone of this one's skin was quite beautiful, really. Liara wondered idly if the human would take offense if she told him so. The young asari archaeologist watched, fascinated, as the interplay of Knossos' ruthless light against the human's features made the shades of his dark skin tone jump from one nuance of brown to the other, the deep lines of his oval-shaped face wrinkling in different patterns as he spoke in a booming voice with that curious accent all humans Liara had encountered seemed to adopt when they vocalized the interstellar trade language.

She promptly decided against admitting to enjoying his exotic beauty when she made the connection between who was talking to her and what the human was telling her.

"You cannot be serious," she responded to the company representative's statement sharply, abandoning all pretense of pleasantness and no longer amused with his coloring. His facial features oozed into something that resembled a frown, but she couldn't really tell. By the Goddess, she hoped she didn't say anything stupid. She would never be able to figure out what he was saying if he actually got angry.

The human male— _man, they are called "man: singular" or "men: plural"_ , she remembered—held up his gloved hands in what Liara assumed was a placating manner. She hoped so. The posture didn't indicate any defensive stance she had seen. But then she had never had to use her biotics against a human before. Besides that, humans were difficult to read—though the few males she had encountered were much easier to read than the females. The females' body language had minutiae of degrees similar to the elcor though without the pheromones—she mentally shook her head and focused on what the man was telling her.

"I'm sorry, Dr. T'Soni." Again he gestured with his hands causing Liara to wonder exactly what he meant by apologizing. One apologized when one did something wrong. Why was he apologizing now? Had she said something idiotic again? Had he said something idiotic? Something cautioned her not to ask.

Though she was leery of the man and his overall intentions, she couldn't help but be fascinated at the way his deep voice resonated off the tall walls of the camp. It lacked the hollow echo of turian speech or the strained vocalization of the salarian dialects.

"You're welcome to stay after the company pulls out, ma'am." His tone changed again, but she was still unable to discern what it was that he was actually telling her. Humans were strange and violent creatures. Their Alliance was the third largest fleet in the galaxy and—Liara had been told—they were nearly as violent as the batarians. She hoped that this one wasn't about to attack her. She did not need _another_ diplomatic incident.

Dealing with the hanar had been an exercise she did not wish to repeat. Oh, how the extranet tabloids _loved_ that debacle. Now, what had the news headlines been? _Matriarch Benezia's Daughter Fends Off Noisy Hanar? Little Wing's Litigation?_

Something similar, she was certain.

Liara cocked her head to the side, hoping that the human knew the asari gesture for impatience, desperate to not only leave the human encampment but also to think about something less stressful than being such a prominent figure's daughter. "And once the company has left?" she questioned her— _him!_ Liara once again reminded herself. She hoped that she didn't slip and use the wrong identifier aloud. She didn't think the human would appreciate being referred to as a different gender.

The man blinked, his eyelids blocking his dark eyes for an instant as he hesitated before stammering, "Well, there won't be anyone here, Doctor. After the GGS report, the company determined that the mining site is too unstable. Gas emissions are increasing daily, and the earthquakes are becoming a regular occurrence. They estimate that when Santorini Mons blows, most of the Valley will be buried under molten rock."

He leaned forward and added with less resonance, "I don't think you want to be here when Santorini Mons erupts, ma'am.

"And then there's the legal business with Parliament. When the company pulls out, so will the security team. Any privateer, pirate or batarian within a few parsecs may come out to loot the place before the volcano explodes. And you'll be stranded here if you don't leave with the rest of the miners."

"I see," she replied flatly, but made no other comments as he continued to stammer his way through what she assumed was a memorized spiel directly from the company spokesperson. Getting vaporized by a huge volcano or being caught when the magma chamber emptied and the caldera collapsed wasn't something she wanted.

But…

Two weeks.

A sense of mental anguish washed through her. Two weeks until Eldfell-Ashland Energy Corporation completely removed its presence from Therum's surface.

That wasn't enough time to do anything, much less find any type of evidence for the University to set up a real excavation after Santorini Mons finally erupted. Not only was Therum a veritable cornucopia of heavy metals it was also teeming with Prothean treasures. The Valley of Akrotiri was the most prolific source of working Prothean artifacts on Therum. She felt like she had only just begun logging them after two years of careful digging and mining throughout the underground chambers. A thrill went up her spine as she thought about it even as the human male continued to speak to her about getting her equipment together and leaving with the mining team within the week.

"Two weeks then," she said briskly interrupting the man, resigning herself to leave when the final crews did—and be back with a full team once the plate tectonics had settled down once again, "Perhaps in that time, I will be able to find something worth while for the University to sponsor a larger excavation."

"As you say, Doctor," he replied, giving a shrug. She wasn't sure what he meant but didn't press the subject.

 _Fifty years of research put on hold because of volcano_ , Liara thought, suddenly grumpy as the human moved away and began issuing orders to the other human workers who had been standing in the area. She ignored their stares, re-collecting her pack which contained her bare necessities and walking away from the human encampment, moving without haste but with unhurried purpose.

The scorching heat of Knossos bore down on her, and even this far away—half a kilometer—from the local lava cluster that oozed directly from the caldera, she could feel the molten river's calidity. As she stomped off across the settlement towards the M29 Grizzly specifically designated as her own, she wondered absently if she used her biotics against the containers of mining instruments between there and herself, if anyone would notice. It would certainly ease some frustration. Some of the reports she had read about humans in her studies of the species stated that the males did not fully understand the female temperament. Something labeled PMS—whatever that stood for. She had yet to look it up as she had been too busy with the hanar lawsuit and dealing with the erroneous press releases and tabloid accounts.

Liara reached her Grizzly and clamored up the footholds to the hatch, wrenching it open, still angered with the entire situation, all but heaving her gear into the hold before gripping the ladder and following her equipment. She swallowed the despair in her throat and powered up the vehicle, the controls coming to life in vivid amber. Her fingertips danced across the keys absently as she recalled this afternoon's adventure.

When the human foreman had summoned her from her dig site in the Valley of Akrotiri, Liara had not really known what to expect. At best she expected to be told that Eldfell-Ashland Energy would be pulling its people until after the volcano erupted. Not that Eldfell-Ashland Energy was undergoing a human Parliament-ordered Reconstruction and permanently disbanding their mining facility on Therum and, thus, pulling all their sponsorship for her dig.

At worst, Liara expected to be propositioned. If it wasn't a turian, it was a human. She avoided both species just as she avoided public appearances within asari space. The last article she had read about herself touted the fact that she was a Pureblood and after that, she had decided that a dig within the Traverse would do her some good. Determined, she had grimly set about rebuilding her reputation, and if she had to go through the humans, then so be it—so long as she could avoid them when necessary.

Humans didn't really live long enough to know any better, she supposed, but that didn't give them a right to think that just because she _looked_ like a female of their species that she was ready to meld with one.

To think, melding with someone, just to meld! That thought made her prickly all over. She had plenty of time to choose a mate and bare a daughter; she wasn't close to being ready to begin her Matron Stage yet. Perhaps she could find a nice volus—Liara blinked. She couldn't afford to be distracted by romantic notions right now. She had to find something that the University would find interesting. Something different and unique to Therum. Something that proved her theory right.

As the Grizzly lumbered through the gates of the human encampment, she recalled the statement issued by the Galactic Geological Survey six weeks ago—just after the first tremors tore across the Valley—stating that increased seismic activity in the area was hazardous to the workers and that Santorini Mons was on the verge of eruption. The Valley was promptly swarming with volcanologists from every Council Race. The GGS had not bothered to speak to Liara when they had arrived, speaking only with the Eldfell-Ashland Energy mining company representatives.

And now—she heaved a sigh—she would have to hurry and find something. _Anything._ And that was the problem. There was evidence that the Protheans had been there. But there was also a lack of specific artifacts where Protheans were concerned. It was like something didn't want the Protheans to be discovered. Something didn't want anyone to know who the Protheans were, what they were—their biology, their culture, their beliefs, their practices. Something didn't want any other dead species discovered either.

There _were_ other dead species. Even the zeioph necropolis on Armeni showed some evidence of that particular space-faring race, and, though momentarily it was a myth, the Leviathan of Dis appeared to give light into another race as well.

But she was working on a time line. Fifty thousand years was enough to time to hide anything, and as the Grizzly ambled along the Valley of Akrotiri skirting the lava river, Dr. Liara T'Soni vowed to find out what it was that the galaxy was hiding. And to do it in two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I hope you enjoyed my version of Liara, and I hope that I did not portray her too out of character or too much like Ambassador Delenn from Babylon 5—though both Delenn and Liara are very capable women/females in their respective fields. I do, however, see the human male as thinking Liara had a very vapid expression on her face because she really wasn't paying attention to him to begin with. :)
> 
> 2\. It really bothers me that Liara's Dig Site only contains one person—Liara. After watching far too many History Channel specials on archeology and Egyptian pyramids, I added people to the dig site. I probably should have added more archaeologists, but, eh, this worked better, and I was able to add some much needed techno-babble.
> 
> 3\. As for Santorini and Akrotiri - Since the Knossos system is probably named after the Minoan city of Knossos (according to the Mass Effect Wiki anyway), I used the volcanic theme of the eruption of Thera which is also called the Santorini eruption and devastated Akrotiri (which may or may not have inspired Plato's Atlantis story)… Hooray for Wikipedia! Anyway, it may or may not be what Therum is named after since Therum is a volcanic world and there's an eruption and all. But that's just my two cents. And, trust me, my two cents aren't necessarily worth anything. o.O


	14. Bête Noire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Liberties taken with the UNC: Missing Marines side quest._

Edolus was an ugly dirt ball. The planet's nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere refracted the light of Sparta in different ways than in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, causing a shifting yellow-brown color where the starkness of space met the pressure of the upper stratosphere. In some ways, Kaidan was reminded of his brief posting at the garrison on Mars just after he made First Lieutenant. Maybe that's why he immediately took a disliking to Edolus. The sandstorm howled at them even as Shepard throttled back the Mako controls and deployed the mass effect thrusters. Though he enjoyed serving with his Commander, he suddenly wished to be anywhere but Edolus.

Shepard had opted to take the marine detachment stationed on the _Normandy_ , and the six-seat Mako was full up with human marines. Kaidan and Shepard manned the main controls in the front. Williams sat behind Kaidan. Beside Williams sat Corporal Guo and behind them were Corporal Hardy and Private Fredericks. After the last month of searching for Saren and the mission on Feros, Kaidan thought that it felt a little strange to be back in command of his own detail again.

As the Mako sliced through the high winds, it felt like his equilibrium dropped out from under him. Overtaken by vertigo, he gripped the seat with one hand, blinking back the double vision and sudden nausea. There was no pain, so he dismissed the idea of a migraine. Perspiration broke out on his upper lip and sweat trickled down his spine.

He'd never been bothered before by atmospheric entry, but the sudden gravitational change made his skin crawl. _Weird._ Edolus had less gravity than Earth but a little more than the _Normandy_ 's A-grav. Kaidan watched Shepard out of the corner of his eye, wondering if she felt it too. If she did, she didn't appear affected by it. Her copper-colored eyes never left the amber readouts in front of her.

"What was that?" Corporal Hardy asked from his seat behind Williams. Kaidan shifted. The top of the tall young man's black-haired head was visible over Williams'. Kaidan had forgotten that Hardy was a biotic. Naturally, the L3 would be able to feel the gravity flux.

A smile spread across Shepard's lips. "I think our quarian guest has been playing with the mass effect generator," she replied just before the Mako hit the ground with a teeth-jarring thump. "For the better, it seems." She sounded impressed. Her fingers flew over the amber keys. "And it looks like our turian guest has been keeping himself busy by fine tuning the instruments."

The drop zone was brown and flat but pitted. The Mako didn't have the inertial dampeners that the _Normandy_ had, so the team of six was jostled against their restraints as Shepard accelerated the craft across the desert plains.

"You mean engineering's getting shown up by a bunch of aliens?" Guo wanted to know. The young man had a sloppy smile on his face. Kaidan knew for a fact that the marine had a huge crush on Tali. Whenever Guo was off duty, he was in engineering chatting with her or making some kind of excuse to be close to her.

"You ladies are off duty more than you're on duty," Shepard quipped, a smile playing across her features, making her look her young age as she sidestepped the alien issue, "you could do some maintenance instead of watching movies. Or bothering our guests." So, the Commander had noticed too. Kaidan found himself grinning despite himself.

Williams snorted. "I bet these countersunk sailors couldn't even find the bulkhead remover."

Kaidan grinned having pulled that particular joke on many an FNG.

"The Chief speaketh the truth, Commander," Hardy laughed causing the Lieutenant to wonder if Hardy had ever had to search for the non-existent bulkhead remover. "Gimme a gun and I'll plug whatever target you want. Gimme a wrench and I'll throw it at the target using my biotics. Just don't ask me to fix anything."

"Noted," the Commander remarked with another wry smile. She turned her gaze to Kaidan. "Alenko, where the hell are we?"

He answered quickly. "Two clicks south, south-west of the distress signal, Commander. Point oh-niner degrees. There's an ore deposit due east of our position."

"Wanna make a quick cred?" Fredericks asked. "AGeS pays pretty well for surveys. My sister is a geologist with ExoGeni's survey team."

Shepard shook her head. "I've been stranded on a planet before, Fredericks. If I stop for ore, a survivor may become a casualty.

"Alenko, make note of the deposit. We'll come back for it. A quick cred sounds like a good idea. Burns is getting expensive. That last bio-amp cost most of my soul."

There was chuckling all around as Shepard gunned it and practically flew over Edolus' surface. It was all Kaidan could do not to be sick as the landscape flew past the portholes and the military's experimental land rover bumped along the rocky outcroppings just beyond the plains. Outside, the sandstorm raged. In the distance, meteors rained down. It only reconfirmed his thoughts that Edolus was a very ugly planet.

As they cleared the hills, an M29 Grizzly seemed to appear out of nowhere on their HUD screens. They were still some distance from the site, but Shepard slowed the Mako so Kaidan could get Intel on the situation. Kaidan rechecked their position on their Topo and the sensor signature of the Grizzly and remarked, "Visual and sensor confirmation, ma'am."

"Life signs?"

"Negative, but we're too far away for that kind of reading," he told her, his eyes darting over the scanners, "No hard suit outputs, however."

"Interface with the Grizzly."

Kaidan depressed a key and entered a command. The computer squawked at him. "Negative, Commander. The Grizzly is offline."

"Can you do a soft boot from your omni-tool, sir?" Hardy inquired.

"I'd have to use the Mako's power output," Kaidan said as he thought about it, calculating a few logarithms. "That might work. Orders, Commander?"

She nodded. "Do it."

After a few moments of decryption and hacking, the Grizzly's VI finally gave him access. He frowned when the VI, Akron, gave him its last logs.

_'Indigenous life form'?_

_On Edolus?_

"Commander, according to the VI, the Grizzly was attacked by some kind of… of 'indigenous life form'. I can't access most of the logs because of memory core failure, but whatever it was, it…it was big. The majority of the systems are fried. Weapons systems were the first to go. Zero hull integrity. VI's confused as to where the crew went. Hell, the VI's confused about everything. I can't get confirmation on anything but some kind of attack by some kind of large creature."

"Lieutenant, you and I both know that it takes liquid to support life. You see any water around?" Her face was drawn and bleak. A frown furrowed her brow, pulled her plush lips down.

Kaidan swallowed. "No, ma'am."

Shepard rolled the Mako to a stop. They could see the Grizzly with startling clarity now, but were still a good ways from whatever might be waiting for them. She ran her hands through her hair and let out a shaky breath. Kaidan wondered if she was still being affected by the mind meld with the asari.

"Commander?"

Shepard didn't reply, but grabbed her helmet and yanked it on, pressurizing her hard suit. Hardy and Guo followed suit without orders. Fredericks didn't move. Neither did Williams nor did Kaidan. When the Commander did speak, her voice was filtered through the Self-Contained Atmospheric Breathing Apparatus.

"How many 'indigenous' life forms attacked them?" she demanded, her voice tinny and hollow within the scaba gear.

"VI says one," the Lieutenant replied after double-checking his omni-tool. "It's emphasizing the size though, ma'am. At least ten meters, possibly fifteen."

 _God, help us_ , Shepard thought, forcing herself not to panic, swallowing hard. She studied the Grizzly, the landscape, took note of what appeared to be sandy mounds scattered around an otherwise flat plain. Kahoku's men were out there somewhere. And all she had were a small unit of five soldiers who had never faced anything like what she suspected to be out there.

 _Six verses a leviathan._ She thought of plan quickly, running scenarios even before she started talking. _If there were survivors…_

"There's only one thing that could have attacked them," she told them, twisting around in her seat so that she could look at them. She was impressed that the two corporals had already pulled on their gear. Maybe they would survive after all. "Biotics won't work against it. But use your barrier anyway. Kinetic barriers won't do a lick of good either. If you get a breach, gel anything you can get your hands on. I won't tolerate decompressed troops.

"It'll go for the Mako first. We'll use the Mako as cover and take it out from the ground."

"Take what out, Skipper?" Williams asked, placing a gloved hand on the back of Kaidan's seat. She appeared calm, but having been around Williams long enough, Kaidan heard the small tremor of dread in her voice. He resisted the urge to hold her hand.

"That Grizzly's right on top of a thresher nest."

Everyone sucked in a collective breath. _Holy hell._

"From the ground?" Fredericks asked finally, his voice shrill. The Private sounded like he wanted to shit himself. Kaidan didn't blame him.

"Full scaba gear, marines," the Commander ordered. The remaining marines pulled on their helmets and pressurized their hard suits. When everyone was ready, she began talking again.

"Weapons check," she stated, and the subtle hisses of weapons deploying filled the tight space of the land rover. "Incendiary ammo and mortar rounds. Shotguns work best, but I want Williams and Guo to snipe the bastard from opposite ends of the Mako. Williams, how close are you to your assassination badge?"

"Final test in a few days, ma'am."

"Consider this your test," Shepard said. "We'll do the formal stuff when we get back to the ship."

"Aye, ma'am."

The Commander took a calming breath, and then coolly began to lay out their plan of attack. "Every one of you knows what happened on Akuze—at least you know about the unclassified parts: No communication from the colony. Routine patrol. When my team landed-everyone on the colony was either melting or gone. It was dusk, and once the threshers rose up, all hell broke loose. Two threshers. The team scattered, firing blindly at the glowing blue that just… appeared… everywhere."

She shut her eyes briefly with a shudder as the memory flashed unbidden in her mind's eye, reliving the roars of the threshers, the screams of terror, of Toombs when one of the creatures latched onto his leg and pulled him under the sand. She breathed in calmly and found her voice again. "I managed to find cover, but not before my hard suit was breached by thresher acid. I watched fifty good men die that night because they were too stupid or too scared to fight from cover.

"We're to assume that's what happened here. We won't have time to check for survivors until after we kill the beast. Threshers will pull you under if they get the chance. _Don't_ give them that chance. From what I've seen, Threshers spit out their digestive fluid and then eat their prey. Corrosive shit. Do _not_ get close, and do _not_ take risks. Stay behind cover until you've got a shot and then take it.

"I'll get the Mako into position, and we'll hit dirt on the starboard side. Be ready to bail out on my mark." She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts, hardening her resolve. Every moment she hesitated, someone else could be dying.

"Fredericks, you and Williams, and I will take position on the bow," she said, meeting each of their eyes as she spoke. "Stay behind the Mako, and don't let any fluid hit you."

"Hardy, you and Guo take position on the stern. Run your shields high.

"Alenko, take up a position out of the way, but stay interfaced with the Mako. Calibrate your omni-tool to fire the main guns and use your HUD to keep a visual. Warn us if it looks like its going for the stern or the bow so we can keep from getting any of its saliva on us.

"The Mako stays in one spot. Do _not_ take any risks," the Commander repeated. "This is _not_ Akuze. We know what we're up against, we have superior fire power, and we are calm. You're trained marines. I expect you to act like it. The thresher will attack the Mako. Especially if the Mako is doing the firing. Use the Mako as cover and when firing, aim for the blue spots above its maw."

She turned in her seat and looked at every single one of them. Kaidan swallowed when her gaze lingered on him.

Shepard fingered her comm. " _Normandy_ , what's your twenty?"

"Tight geosync, Commander," Joker's voice drawled back. "Problems?"

"Another fine Navy day," Shepard told him brightly. "About to play with a thresher. Have the med team standby." She said it like she was commenting on the pleasant weather on Elysium.

"You marines get all the fun," Joker commented. He was silent a moment. "Med team on standby. Oh, Wrex wants off the boat. Says it will be good fight."

"No time. We're too close. He can have the next thresher maw we find."

"Smells like varren after you piss on em," Wrex's voice cut through the channel. Kaidan really didn't want to know.

Shepard, however, nodded. "Yeah. I don't like it either. Shepard out." She looked at her people. "Weapons hot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Bête Noire:** "Black Beast"_


	15. Of Acid Baths and Cherries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _ **Thank you:**_ _Everyone who has been keeping up with thing._
> 
>  _ **Liberties:**_ _More liberties taken with Shepard's biotics. Let's also play pretend that things will burn when CO2 and nitrogen are liberally applied… O.o Science? Pfft. We don't need no stinkin' science… XD_

As the sweltering heat of Knossos beat down upon the surface of Therum, Daphne Morris rubbed the sweat from her brow with the back of her gloved hand. When she had first arrived on the volcanic world, she had just been transferred off the Eldfeld-Ashland Energy mining installation on Luna. The novelty of Therum had quickly worn out. Even encased in her company-issued uniform with its built-in microprocessors circulating coolant within the layers closest to her skin, the miner couldn't get over how hot it was on the volcanic world. She thought she would get used to it, but after seven months, she was more than ready to leave.

_Should have taken that engineering job at Chemical Astromotors of Arcturus._

"One more week." The voice came from the project lead, Jackson al Qatr, as he fell in beside her, matching her stride for stride as they made their way past the main gate and towards the gun turrets.

Daphne nodded, too tired from the heat to do much else, thinking that no matter how much her uniform worked her, she couldn't stay cool in the harsh heat. Daphne tugged her auburn-colored, sweat-slicked ponytail tighter as they reached the first turret, and she activated her omni-tool to interface with it.

As the chief engineer of the Therum mining facility, it fell to her to begin the process of disabling the turrets so that Elanus Risk Control Services could pack them when they pulled out the week following the evacuation of Eldfeld-Ashland employees.

"Why do we have to do this, again?" she grumbled to Jackson who only smiled benignly. She entered a series of commands into her omni-tool and waited while the device relayed the commands to the turret.

"The company didn't pay for set up and take down," he told her with a shrug. "Saved creds."

Daphne snorted. "Oh, happy day."

The omni-tool suddenly beeped and a series of binary scrolled across the screen. It scrolled much too fast for her to translate, but she caught the last few words: _sovereign will reap the heathens_

Puzzled, she reentered her commands:

_UserInfo=(LogIn="KPryde.007", PWrd="shadowCat")_

_Command=(VI="Whedon", InputMode=pEpsilon, Name="Initiate Shut Down Protocol Epsilon", Control=True, Shift="0.8", Alt=False)_

The turret didn't respond. Daphne groaned in frustration, jamming her finger against her omni-tool. Just her luck. Her brow furrowed as she studied the device.

There had to be something…

She was not looking up when the other turret turned and tracked the two humans. She was too absorbed in hacking the turret at her location to notice when the other turret's main gun came online. When it fired a lone rocket at the unsuspecting humans, she was too shocked to move, her eyes wide. She was dead before she could comprehend what was happening or even to scream as the rocket detonated against her, igniting her flesh, shredding her body as the concussive force radiated in a violent shockwave.

Daphne Morris and Jackson al Qatr were not the first organic casualties of the geth invasion force, nor would they be the last.

###

God sure made some weird things. It was one of the great mysteries of the cosmos. And Ash knew that she would never be able to figure out why this particular creature was a part of the cosmic food chain. Why the hell did they need thresher maws anyway?

Like junjun on Amateratsu. _Damn space fleas._ No purpose served but to annoy the living hell at out of her. She wished the evil giant centipede would just die already.

They took cover again as Alenko fired the Mako's machine guns from his kneeling position while acid from the thresher's maw soared over their heads and their guns cooled down. Ash used the short reprieve to patch an area on her leg that was beginning to breach from an earlier spatter near the Mako's nose.

"How much more?" she questioned. She had lost track of how many shots they had fired at the thresher's face parts—its four glowing eyes, its pincer-like mandibles—and even with her genetic enhancements, she was beginning to feel fatigued.

Shepard looked at her sharply, sidestepped the question. "How badly are you hit, Williams?"

"It just splashed on my leg, ma'am," the Chief replied, watching as the omni-gel cooled and sealed the ablative coating once again. "I've got enough ablative to keep it from breaching all the way through. I'm running out of omni-gel to use as patches though. I've already gelled my pistol and most of my shotgun." To Shepard's dismay, all Williams had left of her Hahne-Kedar Storm was its inertia bolt and the high explosive rounds.

Shepard snagged the rounds and emptied her HMWSG's magazine, replacing the old inferno with the new ammo. This she could use. This would do some good. If only she had had one of these on Akuze…

This was no time to get stuck in the goddamned past. The past was over. Done. It was the present, and in the present, Shepard determined grimly, she was going to shove her boot so far up this thresher's ass it was going to spit her toenails instead of acid.

Of course, high explosive rounds and carnage mortar worked much better than any boot, she thought as she charged around the Mako's nose and fired a shot before diving for cover once again. The chitinous hide of the gargantuan creature ruptured, but it beast didn't show any signs of feeling it. And then there was her last grenade, but they still had the Mako's main gun. She wasn't about to use their last resort prematurely.

Shaking her head to clear it, she called up her hardsuit's VI and adjusted her helmet's comm. to dim down the clamor of weapons fire. Helmets' comms. were designed to pick up outside noise so that when in scaba gear, the soldier wasn't taken unaware of their environment. She normally didn't get headaches, but ever since Feros…Hell, ever since that damned beacon on Eden Prime…

"Alenko," she called over her comm., putting the issue out of her mind. Now was not the time to deal with it. Chakwas had said she was fine.

"Yes, ma'am?" He didn't look up from his omni-tool. She hadn't expected him to.

"Got any explosive rounds?"

"No, ma'am. Inferno, cryo and Tungsten." Kaidan grinned despite himself, knowing she couldn't see his face anyway, as he tracked the thresher in his HUD. "Wasn't expecting a giant worm of death today."

Shepard snorted. "SNAFU, Lieutenant."

"Expect the unexpected." Kaidan's grin stretched his face more as he received another snort from Shepard. "Shall we decree that explosive rounds are a requirement to serving with humanity's first Spectre?"

The Commander rounded the nose of the Mako, fired, and rolled back before another acidic spray hit the vehicle. "So it is decreed: Explosive ammo," she confirmed panting. He could almost see her smile. "And bigger guns."

"There's nothing wrong with my gun, Commander," Kaidan told her defensively. To demonstrate, he depressed the trigger switch on his omni-tool, firing the Mako's main gun. The shell smashed through the chitin of the creature, blowing off one its fore claws. It gave a shriek and spit more acid.

"Well, well," Williams drawled, "touchy there, aren't we LT?" She sprang up, caught the thresher in her sights, pulled the trigger and popped back down again within seconds, lurching out of the way of another corrosive projectile, bumping into Private Fredericks whose shotgun was smoking.

When Private First Class Charles "Gun Dog" Fredericks signed up for the Systems Alliance Military, he never imagined that his first posting would be aboard the experimental _SSV Normandy_ or that he would serve along side Commander Shepard, the Savior of Terra Nova, the Sole Survivor of Akuze and humanity's first Spectre.

He also never imagined that his first combat experience would be in the middle of B.F.E. fighting a dinosaur worm that spit acid at them.

_What the hell?_

Or that the mother fucking monster would be so… so grabby.

_Damn it._

Or that he would be ordered to kill it on foot.

_Fuck!_

Or that, according to his commanding officer, this was the easy way.

_Easy, my left nut._

But there was the young Private—in full scaba gear on a barren world with no breathable air, holding his overheated shotgun to his chest, crouched by the front tire of the Mako ducking away from the beast's green stomach juices with Commander Shepard and Gunny Williams. And they were joking. _Joking!_ The acid spit hit the dirt less than a meter from his position sending up dust particles, and Edolus' perpetually dry ground greedily soaked up the moisture, leaving holes where the corrosive fluid ate away at the rock beneath the upper layer of silicate.

Fredericks took a deep breath reigning in his fear to drop everything and run like a Venusian chicken. He imposed iron control over himself as he shoved another mortar round into the bore under the barrel of his shotgun. The Commander needed him. He mentally willed the overheated weapon to be ready to fire again to no avail. Carnage was all well and good, but waiting for the gun to cool down was a bitch.

Fredericks respected the hell out of Commander Shepard and Lieutenant Alenko. It was an honor serving with both of them. Even without military training ingrained into his will, if either one asked him to kiss their ass, he would giddily ask which cheek. But, if this was some kind of weird initiation thing to test his bravado, he was going to be fucking pissed. He joined the military to see space and fight pirates and aliens. Not an acid-spitting uglisaurus graboid buried on a rock in the Traverse. This was _not_ what he signed on for!

Gunny Williams had her head up her ass too much to be bothered with, but he obeyed her instructions whenever she gave them—that was the way the military worked. Personally he was tired of playing danger nut or fetch-the-whatever-invisible-object-the-superior-officer-could think-of-as-a-prank game. (That game got old real quick when there were twenty-five people who outranked him. Especially when some were just sadistic enough to rouse him from his sleeper pod at Oh-Dark-Thirty—usually Gunny Williams, Joker, or Corporal Guo.)

"Wouldn't you like to find out, Chief," Lieutenant Alenko's voice was even in Fredericks ear.

"Bring it, sir," Gunny Williams shot back.

It surprised Fredericks that the Commander laughed.

The staccato of weapons fire, the boom of the Mako's main gun, the playful banter between the marines, and the blast of carnage mortar from the Commander's shotgun brought Fredericks back to the fight. He stood, pointed his Storm, and pulled the bore trigger, the resulting fireball immediately overheating his weapon again. The round hit its mark splattering one of the glowing blue… _Were those its eyes?_ Hell, he didn't care. The round took out the blue spot and the thresher bellowed, flailing its wicked looking mandibles, scratching the ground with its remaining fore claw.

And then it hawked up another acidic loogey.

The marines hunkered down avoiding the spray, and the Mako's main canon was covered in an acid bath.

"That's it, Commander," Kaidan reported as his HUD went red. "Main guns offline. One remaining machine gun. Limited mobility."

"Hardy, where'd you train at?" Shepard asked suddenly, and Kaidan's head whipped around to look at her incredulously. He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped his it closed again. She knew what she was doing. It wasn't his place to ask.

"Ma'am?" Hardy's voice cut over the comm. The younger man sounded just as confused as Kaidan felt.

Shepard's voice was clipped. "Biotics. Training. Where. Which Program."

"Project: BIAT, ma'am. Biotic Indoctrination, Adjustment and Training on Piazzi Station," Hardy answered as Guo jumped up and took a shot at the thresher. The crack of his weapon was followed by him diving away as more acid splattered. "Is there a reason—"

"Damn it," Kaidan grumbled, when the Mako's HUD suddenly went blank. _Bye, Lenny._ "The Mako's offline, Commander. No more heavy firepower."

"Now mine's bigger than yours," Williams crowed, darting out to take a shot and right back in again.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he looked over to find the Commander glowing with dark energy. Reflexively, he performed the mnemonic for his own barrier. "Commander?"

Without answering, Shepard sprang to her feet priming a grenade.

"Eat this," she hissed. Kaidan paled a little at the venom that dripped from her voice.

She lobed the grenade and followed up by executing a mnemonic Kaidan had only seen her do on Eden Prime, just after Jenkins' death. With that move, she had single handedly taken out the assault drones that had killed the kid.

To Kaidan's amazement the grenade soared the distance between the Mako and the thresher, and attached itself to one of the creature's mouth pinchers.

The beast's mandible detonated seconds later in a fiery ball that took out the pincher and great chunks of its other mandible, the thermal paste of the incendiary explosive clinging to the thresher's head, disintegrating everything it touched. The creature roared, its sonic assault suddenly delving into the infrasound range. Kaidan's hardsuit's systems nearly winked out. The thresher bucked, clawing at the ground as the thermal paste continued to burn though its head.

"Keep firing! It's not dead yet. Use your assault rifles," Shepard commanded, as she abandoned her shotgun and yanked out her assault rifle. Kaidan's brought out his assault rifle and took aim at the creature, splaying rounds into its blue eyes. The inferno rounds weren't as effective as Shepard's grenade, but appeared to be working.

"Hardy," Shepard barked, "freeze it."

Hardy surged out from cover, his body rippling in unnatural light. The Corporal's quickly executed mnemonic surprised Kaidan so much that the Lieutenant fumbled with his rifle, nearly dropping it. As he brought the scope back up, images of the past flashed across his mind's eye.

_Slender hips._

_Gentle brown eyes._

_Shiny black hair._

_An elfin grin._

Then it was gone in an instant as Kaidan focused on the present with a forceful shake of the head.

"Double Victor," Shepard ordered, leading the charge on the right. "Move it! On the double, Marines!"

The six marines sprinted from around the Mako, forming a V-shaped infantry line, Kaidan leading on the left. They inverted their V-shape with Kaidan and Shepard standing less than three meters apart. No one lowered his or her weapon as they waited with baited breath for Hardy's stasis to wear off.

Stasis was a funny thing. Nothing could move inside it, but the thermal paste of Shepard's grenade and the inferno rounds that riddled the gravitationally-challenged creature kept burning. Even when the creature stopped glowing with dark energy, its body oozing viscous green fluid.

The thresher didn't move.

They continued to wait.

It still didn't move, only burned and oozed.

Shepard was the first of the line to do something. She tossed her overheated assault rifle down and headed back towards the Mako to fetch her HMWSG. It was entirely too expensive to leave behind. "Fredericks, now that your cherry's popped, pinpoint the origin of the distress signal."

"Aye, aye, Commander."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Gun Dog definition:** Bird Dog. Fredericks knows how to fetch. :D_
> 
>  
> 
> _**Double Victor:** infantry/platoon formation used in World War II (I'm not sure about modern times.)_


	16. Blessed with Stupid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A little fun and some techno-babble. Liberties taken with Citadel: Snap Inspection._
> 
> _Thank you, everyone, for reading and to those of you who have left reviews._

Liberty. Downtime. Off duty.

_Thank God._

When they arrived at the Citadel the day before, Shepard and Pressly announced that the _Normandy_ was undergoing an inspection by Rear Admiral Mikailovich and his engineering crew. It would take a few days for the inspection to be completed. The crew had Liberty until inspection was complete. Mikailovich had already arranged accommodations for the crew at Hawksmoor. Shepard had been livid. Kaidan could tell by the way she stood, the way her coppery-green eyes had flashed when she spoke to the marine and alien ground teams in the Comm Room, though her voice had been neutral, only stating the facts.

Kaidan's final shift before Liberty had ended thirty minutes ago, and he had carefully packed his belongings in his sea bag, leaving his extra service weapon and rifle in his locker. Inside the sea bag were one set of civvies, his service and formal dress uniforms, five extra service uniforms, his Scorpion Light hardsuit, and other essentials—everything he owned that wasn't at his home on Earth.

There was no way Kaidan was staying another night on board when he knew that the officer's quarters at the Systems Alliance Hawksmoor Barracks in Bachjret Ward were much more accommodating. He was an officer, but single, so he wasn't expecting his own room. At least at Hawksmoor, there was more privacy, he had a place to store his gear other than a locker the size of a urinal, and the chow hall was decent with a real cook and not a ration dispenser. He toyed with the idea of getting an apartment on the Citadel, but the paperwork alone wasn't worth the hassle to transfer his primary base and housing pay from his home in Singapore to Hawksmoor.

Shouldering his sea bag, Kaidan heaved a sigh as he stepped off the _Normandy_ 's lift on the Quarters Deck and made his way up the stairs to the Command Deck. Strapped to his belt was his Kessler. Inside his boot was a military-issue talon. Alliance Regs did not permit off-duty military personnel to bring any ordinance heavier than a pistol to Hawksmoor. He didn't particularly care. He was a biotic, after all. A living weapon and an ordinance much larger than a pistol. It should have bothered him to think about it in those terms. But for the first time since Brain Camp, he was looking forward to breaking a rule.

Shepard had seemed calm when she made the announcement to her ground crew after calling them to the Comm. Room. However, her voice had been clipped near the end of the debriefing. Kaidan hadn't pressed the subject, knowing his commander's mannerisms enough not to do so. It had surprised him that, after the debriefing, she asked both he and Williams' their opinions.

Kaidan had given his CO a shrug. "I think that, after this month of chasing Saren around and the crap on Feros and Edolus, the crew probably needs a break, ma'am."

Williams had bobbed her head. "Fredericks is still going on about the thresher." She shuddered. "Poor kid."

"We aren't any closer to finding Saren," he added, "so Liberty is a good morale booster."

And then Kaidan was blessed with stupid once again.

"Besides, I owe you a beer anyway, Commander."

It was already out of his mouth before he could stop himself. He froze, then swallowed, looked at Shepard hesitantly. _I didn't just say that._ Technically, he'd just asked his commanding officer out in front of a subordinate. _Technically._

 _That_ … wasn't planned. Sure, he liked his commanding officer, she was… well, she was Lieutenant Commander Shepard. Who wouldn't like her? But _that_? _That_ was just idiocy. She was his _commanding officer_. There were _Regs_. Why did he have to get this way around her? He was thirty-two years old, an officer in the Alliance and not a love-struck, hormonally-challenged teenager.

He'd just placed his damn career on the line if she interpreted his comment wrong.

Williams had watched the exchange with a grin, the same grin she wore when she had caught him staring at Shepard as she ate; and the same grin Williams wore when she had told them that she would walk drag on the Citadel after stupid had fallen out of Kaidan's mouth the first time.

Shepard had only tilted a brow at him. "For what, Alenko?"

Grateful that she was giving him a way out, he thought fast and was rewarded when his brain decided to work.

He managed to shrug and say, offhandedly, "Eden Prime, ma'am." It was true. He was an L2 biotic. If she hadn't pushed him out of the way of the beacon's impulse, there wasn't anyway anyone would believe him about the images that were burned into Shepard's brain. At least the Commander had some influence behind her name. She was a respected officer and a stable biotic, had survived the Raid, had saved a colony and ate threshers for breakfast. Influence.

The L2 movement was picking up speed faster than ever as the initial exposures grew older and more unstable. Hell, just before they arrived at Edolus, he'd received a coded message from someone calling himself Father Kyle urging him to join an L2 commune. Like that would ever happen.

She studied him a moment, assessing him frankly. There were times when he wished he was a telepath just so he wouldn't feel so damned uncomfortable around… well, it was only her. A trickle of sweat ran down his spine at the intenseness of her odd-colored gaze. Then she snorted indelicately a slight frown drawing her manicured brows together. "After all the trouble the damn beacon and the damn Cipher have put me through, I think you owe me at least two."

"I think I can handle that, ma'am," he'd said with a surprised laugh. A little voice in the back of his brain congratulated him on a job well done.

Williams had crossed her arms and leveled him with a look. "What am I, LT, chopped liver?"

Good-naturedly, he played along. "I don't know, Chief, aren't you from Amateratsu?"

Something flashed in the Chief's eyes that he couldn't interpret, but it was gone as fast as it had come. Maybe he would ask her about it; maybe he wouldn't press the subject.

"Aw, have a heart, Lieutenant," Shepard spoke up, smiling for the first time since discovering the remains of Kahoku's men. "Williams just earned her assassination badge. We need to celebrate. You've already volunteered for the first round."

"And the second," the Chief had supplied cheerfully.

The smile that was playing across the Commander's plush lips warmed his blood, and, for the oddest reason, so did the smile that brushed up against Williams' generous mouth. He opened his mouth to object, but closed it quickly before more stupid fell out. "I'm not going to win," he realized aloud, crossing his arms, "am I?"

The response had been in unison. "Nope."

Kaidan's thoughts were drawn back to the present when he saw Joker hobble through the Command Deck door at the top of the stairwell.

* * *

Liberty. Downtime. Off duty.

_Kill me now._

Joker hated downtime. It meant that he actually had to get up from his seat. Sometimes when the second pilot relieved him, he was too tired to argue and ready for chow and sleep, but for the most part, he hated it. Downtime was synonymous with therapy time. Because before he could eat or sleep, he had to visit his favorite place in the whole galaxy-the infirmary. _Yay. Go me._ So he found something to occupy his mind while he refastened his leg braces flicking the switch to the mini-mass effect generator, grabbed his crutches, and gave a lewd gesture to the helmsman relieving him.

"I don't think we have time for that, sir," she remarked, her fingers running over the panel as she logged her time in.

Despite himself, Joker found himself grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Aw, Hendricks, you wound me."

"I will if you don't get the hell off my bridge," she told him archly. Then added, "Sir."

Because the Systems Alliance was a pain in the ass when it came to things like rank or ratings, Joker only outranked the red haired Lieutenant Rebecca Hendricks when he was sitting in the chair. If they weren't on duty or weren't in the chair, they were essentially the same rank, but he had more flight hours. And that accounted for absolutely nothing in Grand Scheme of Things that was the All-Mighty Systems Alliance Bureaucracy unless it was evaluation time. Only then could he rub it in their faces that the creaky-legged cripple was the best.

Seeing that Hendricks was going to be a bitch—he knew she wanted to run to port before he did, and by _mysterious_ circumstances he was getting to go first—Joker hobbled across the bridge and down the gangway, grumbling under his breath all the way off the Command Deck, nodding to the various techs that looked overeager to be off the boat as they saluted him. He had half a mind to give them more duties just for the hell of it—he outranked most of them, and it brought about a certain satisfaction that only came with knowing he had the power to make someone else miserable.

He'd learned the hard way that allowing any modicum of weakness meant that someone with stronger legs was going to replace him, no matter how good he was behind the helm. Just because his leg bones were diseased, didn't mean he was defenseless. War was more about politics than it was about actual fighting. It was nice to be able to access the ship's communications systems and have something to exploit on someone other than himself. He wasn't about to allow anyone any advantage over him just because of his disease. And the techs could bite him for all he cared.

Downtime also meant chow time. And that meant he got to spend quality time harassing Alenko, Williams, or one of the little engineers that got in his way. Sometimes he even managed to harass Navigator Pressly, but the Chief Navigator had taken to ignoring him as of late and so Pressly was added to the "No Fun" list along with Wrex, Commander Shepard, Chief Adams, and Garrus. He suspected that if he had very many more snarky remarks for Tali, she would be added to the list too. She snarked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Trivia/Geekery: _ **Bachjret Ward:**_ _One of the Wards of the Citadel named in ME2_** _
> 
> **Codex**
> 
> **Locations: Hawksmoor**
> 
> Though the building isn’t what one would call “Prime Real Estate,” the location of **Hawksmoor Barracks** in Bachjet Ward of the Citadel is less expensive than buildings in Tayseri or Zakera. Located within less than a kilometer from the Citadel Security (C-Sec) Academy, Systems Alliance officials saw the strategic value of the building. During the Battle of the Citadel in 2183, the Alliance was able to use this to their advantage to co-ordinate efforts against the geth invaders.
> 
> Originally intended as only a residence for service members, the building is one hundred floors tall and sealed against the vacuum. It is a fairly new construct, built during an influx of elcor to the area in 2093. Most of its bulkheads, however, are as recent as yesterday. Ten of its floors are leased out to civilian contractors. One such contractor is the Ayndroid Group, an RRD laboratory who holds the proprietary technology to the Argus Scanner Array. Other floors feature the Alliance recruiting offices, recreational facilities, Fifth Fleet 63rd Scout Flotilla Headquarters, and service members' living quarters. Only one of many Alliance barracks located on the Citadel, Hawksmoor is the primary go-to for many a service member because of the 63rd Scout Flotilla Headquarters located within.
> 
> Keepers can be seen in various offices. A primary point of contention is the floors dedicated to service members’ recreational and dining facilities. Keepers rearrange the layouts of the floors on a regular basis. Refrigeration loss due to a power source vanishing mysteriously has led to food poisoning and food spoilage on several occasions since Hawksmoor was officially established in 2158. It has become such a problem in recent years that administrators are considering another building a “block” down from the current facility. Due to destruction of much of Bachjet Ward during the Battle of the Citadel, the move has been put on hold indefinitely.
> 
> _**Trivia/Geekery:** Hawksmoor was named for Nicholas Hawksmoor, the architect of Westminster Abbey. The Ayndroid Group exists in canon universe and has ties to Cerberus._


	17. Waxing Electric

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _More liberties taken all around, including diseases with very little info and therapies. Kindly stretch the suspension of disbelief. Also, I have no idea if anyone has ever used EMS therapy on Joker—or if it would actually help instead of break him. Hopefully, I'm being original. (If not, please rec! I would love to read! Joker is awesome.)_
> 
> _Thank you, readers and reviewers! You are wonderful._
> 
> _Enjoy!_

"The Commander wanted to talk to you before you left, Alenko."

Kaidan frowned at that, hoping Shepard wasn't backing out of meeting with him and Williams at the Embassy Lounge that evening after they checked into their quarters at Hawksmoor. He looked up at the _Normandy_ 's pilot as Joker gingerly navigated the stairwell much like a puppy learning how to navigate stairs would. Though they didn't emit dark energy, Kaidan felt the low hum of a mass effect field from Joker's braces from where Kaidan stood at the center of the stairwell. The pilot had turned up the frequency higher than usual. It made Kaidan's teeth itch.

"Do you know where she is?"

Joker met his gaze with a frown. "Comm Room." He took another step, first with both crutches, then one foot, then the other. "Quit staring."

Kaidan wondered who or what tied Joker's panties in a knot. Then thought maybe it was because the pilot had to leave the ship for Liberty. God forbid that he had to go to port with the rest of them. Their orders had been clear as mud: Rear Admiral Mikhailovich and his engineering team had full run of the ship during inspection. Kaidan suspected that Shepard didn't want a confrontation between the crew and Mikhailovich's pukes. Having only met the man once, the biotic was especially thrilled that Shepard had made the call.

But, if Joker wanted to be pissy about it, then Kaidan could be pissy right back. He knew Joker wouldn't take his shit anyway. "I wasn't. I'm waiting. You're taking up the whole damn stairwell." The badminton game of shit flinging had begun.

Joker didn't bat an eye, but instead took another step. "Then use the other one, dumb ass." His voice was strained. Kaidan pointedly ignored the breach in protocol and wondered if the pilot was in some kind of pain.

"I was here first." He leaned against the railing, crossing his feet, waiting for the next round.

"You were—" Joker broke off and glared at him. "Glad to see I have a friend, Alenko."

Kaidan shrugged, feeling like he'd just kicked his friend down the stairs. "Then don't accuse me of staring."

The pilot huffed but was silent continuing to creep down—both crutches first, then one foot and then the other. _L2 Biotic with combat training: one; Pilot with creaky legs: zero._ _Way to go, Alenko._ When he was almost to Kaidan's position, the biotic turned and went back down the stairs, stopping at the bottom and waiting for Joker to arrive. It wasn't verbalized, but the routine had slowly developed over the course of their tour of duty if they happened to meet while going up or down the stairs—in case Joker fell, Kaidan could use his biotics to catch the _Normandy_ 's chief helmsman before any damage could be done. Joker didn't usually complain, and Kaidan never pressed the subject.

"I'll be at the embassy lounge later if you want to have a beer with us," Kaidan told him when Joker had arrived at the final step.

The scruffy pilot cocked his head to the side, his hazel eyes boring into Kaidan's skull. "Us?"

"The Commander and Williams." Kaidan tried to sound nonchalant about it. "They coerced me into two rounds."

"Dog." Joker's grin was lecherous.

Kaidan snorted and added an eye roll for good measure. "I wish." The best way to deny something was to admit to it sarcastically. "Join us if you want," he added sincerely. He trudged up the stairs without waiting for a reply and palmed the access panel, hoping his face wasn't as red as it felt.

"I'll comm you," Joker's voice followed him through the door.

When Kaidan arrived in the Comm Room, Shepard was speaking with a life-sized holo of Captain Anderson.

"Contact me later, Anderson," Shepard was saying, her body tense. Kaidan wondered if he should step back out and wait, but figured they were almost done. "We can discuss it in detail."

The Captain sighed. "Don't be stubborn about this, Shepard. It's a practicality. You report to the Council now. Not to Fifth Fleet."

"My crew reports to Fifth Fleet," she argued. "Just because I'm a Spectre—" She began, but stopped and took a breath. "Forward the information to my omni-tool," she relented.

Anderson's holo-visage smiled. "It isn't so bad."

"Above my pay grade, Captain," she muttered. "Literally."

"It's better than staying at Hawksmoor." With that, Anderson's image winked out, and Shepard turned to face Kaidan. She gave him a forced smile.

"You wanted to speak with me, Commander?" He was not going to ask what the conversation was about. She was Anderson's protégé. Everyone knew that. Whatever it was, it wasn't his business. He was envious at the rapport the two shared though, like a father/daughter relationship or even… even something more—a black snake of jealousy coiled around Kaidan's heart at the thought.

She regarded him somberly a moment before she spoke. "I owe you an apology, Alenko."

"No, you don't." He had no idea what the Commander could have possibly done to apologize to him and silently begged her not to be saying that she wasn't joining him for a drink. That she would be spending time with Captain Anderson now that he was Udina's attaché. The snake was taking large bites of his heart now. Kaidan's chest was beginning to ache.

She shook her head. "Yeah, I do. I've—I've not been myself as of late. Edolus got to me, and I've been behaving unprofessionally." She gave an exasperated sigh and ran her fingers through the dark strands of hair that framed her face. "What's your opinion of the last mission?"

He blinked. Hadn't they already gone over this? "Edolus?" She nodded, scooped up her sea bag and shouldered it.

"I know what you said before," she told him, indicated for them to leave, "I want to know the off-record version."

They fell in line together, walking up the gangway to exit the room as he thought about it a moment. "Hell, Commander, we took on a thresher maw on foot. And we survived. I don't know what surprises me more. If you hadn't been there…" He shuddered. The mission would have gone to hell, of that he was certain. He'd never seen a thresher nest before. Not in the field anyway. "Well, you saw what happened to Kahoku's unit."

Shepard frowned as they made their way off CIC and to the airlock. And Kaidan knew that his Commander somehow felt responsible for their deaths. It had been written all over her face in the debriefing and in her actions over the transit from the Artemis Tau Cluster to the Citadel. It worried him. She was a strong woman. He wondered how much more she could take before she snapped. She was lucky not to be an L2.

The Raid on Mindoir. N7 training. Akuze. The beacon on Eden Prime. The overload on Feros. The Cipher. And those were just things that he knew about. Many a man would have snapped already. He was certain he would have.

The airlock cycled open, and they stepped into it. The door closed and Decon started. It itched worse without gear.

She was a graduate of the N7 program. There were probably things that she had seen and done that were worse than a thresher—or pretty damn near close. As usual when he was around her, he had to fight the basic urge to want to protect her. Wrex was right, if it came down to Kaidan and Shepard in a fight, she would win. Kaidan wouldn't even put up a fight.

But the crux of the matter was: She cared too much. It was something he admired about her. Even on Eden Prime she had been gentle with his feelings after Jenkins death. It was also her weakness. Something anyone who knew her could easily exploit.

"You… you can't save everyone, Shepard," he told her quietly. "Ma'am. You can only do so much."

* * *

Shepard regarded him coolly a moment as they waited for the airlock to pressurize and Decon to stop. Alenko was right, but her anger was justified. Good men had died for… for what? Politics? Greed? It didn't matter the reason, she supposed as they stood there listening to the VI's metallic voice, she was still going to put those responsible to justice. She was a Spectre now and she had the power and capability to do it. Even if she had to look under every rock on every planet in the Traverse. There was no way she was going to let some damned political agenda end the lives of good soldiers. There were causes better than credits to fight for.

Saving the Galaxy from Saren was one.

She took a breath. "It doesn't make it any easier, Alenko." He nodded, and said nothing, only continued to gaze at her, waiting for her to speak. She liked the play of light over his thick head of hair. "Saren's our top priority," she told him finally, irritated that the Lieutenant continued to affect her in ways she hadn't felt in years, "but I'm going to find those responsible for this."

"Revenge, ma'am?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

She shook her head. "Just because I can legally execute whoever I think deserves it, doesn't mean I have to. The media can do so much more damage than a mass accelerator any day."

"Ouch," the Lieutenant said, a grin stretching across his lips that made her pulse speed up. "Remind me to stay on your good side, Commander."

* * *

Eldfell-Ashland Energy mining company was pulling out Therum. Liara was assailed by a terrible sense of bitterness. After all this time, she had less than two weeks left to find something worthwhile. _All because of human politics and a volcano._ Tagging along with various mining companies had both its pros and its cons. Mostly cons, now that she thought about it.

Liara gave a frustrated sigh as she logged yet another component of an artifact that was wildly out of place in the Prothean ruins. She made a note of it on her data pad affixing her thumbprint for verification.

It wasn't Prothean origin. The design was too intricate, the markings too geometrical. A thrill went up her spine. There _were_ others. Another dead technologically-savvy species perhaps? What killed them? How did they die? What were they called? Did they die out all at the same time, or was a gradual extinction? Other questions surfaced.

Oh, how she wished she could gather more evidence. Then the university would back a full-fledged dig, and she could possibly find the answers she so desperately wanted. She had to know!

A deafening explosion clouded her thoughts. Liara's head shot up, and she gazed around with wide eyes. _By the Goddess!_ Reflexively, the scientist called up her biotic barrier as silicate rained down. It wasn't the burning scent of sulfur that invaded her senses.

_That… that wasn't Santorini Mons…_

What unnerved her more than thinking that she was about to be covered in molten rock was the fact that the very air smelled of ozone and metal. She felt mass effect fluctuations in the gravitational field well before she saw the heavily armored krogan encased in his biotic shield.

_A krogan? Here?_

"Saren requires your presence," the krogan grumbled, his leathery head menacing. He was flanked by several machine-like creatures. She blinked. Were those…

"Geth?" she verbalized.

"Come quietly or fight," the krogan told her, ignoring her question but confirming it at the same time. He looked her up and down. "A fight sounds fun. Never fought an asari commando before."

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "I'm a scientist." A fight most definitely did _not_ sound fun, but she would not let herself be put down by this brute. And why did Saren, a renown Spectre "require her presence"? Why did Saren send _krogan and geth_ to collect her? She was an archeologist who specialized in the Prothean Extinction. What could they possibly want with her?

The krogan wagged his head, looked at her with one eye, then the other. "A shame."

"What does Saren want?" Liara had her biotics, but didn't carry any other kind of weapon. She never needed to. One of the pros of traveling with mining companies.

The krogan grunted. "What do I look like, a messenger?"

* * *

For some reason, the infirmary was the coldest room on the ship (and the good doctor made it her specialty to strip each and every one who walked through her door). Joker sat relaxed—stripped to his skivvies and his teeth practically chattering—on the first medical cot in the infirmary with his diseased legs hanging off its edge and wiggling his bare toes at Dr. Chakwas who was administering his therapy. He hated the infirmary as much as he hated the idea of leaving the ship to the ministrations of Rear Admiral Mikhailovich's bilge rats.

"My, but you're in a mood today," Dr. Chakwas commented dryly. Joker was sure she purposely pulled the hair just below his kneecap with an electrode patch that was being difficult in placement. He was just stubborn enough with his condition not to shave his legs bare for the daily administration of his therapy. It made him good and grouchy for all those unlucky enough to be present. Chakwas _always_ pulled his hair attaching the sticky-backed wired patches.

"I'm the epitome of pleasantness, my good woman." The tone of his voice was anything but pleasant. Dr. Chakwas only gave him a knowing smile as she applied another electrode patch for the electrical muscle stimulation of his bare right leg—and, of course, ripped out more hair. _Witch._

Joker inwardly cringed when the infirmary door cycled open and the sound of boots stomped through to the medi-gel dispenser directly behind him. He wondered who it was that decided that now would be a good time to visit the infirmary for corpsman candy, if they were going to give him a hard time, and if he outranked them enough to give them a hard time back.

And if he really cared that rank may or may not be involved. Most of the senior officers on board knew better than to—

"Hello, Chief Williams," Dr. Chakwas greeted the person behind him as the doctor applied an electrode patch to Joker's left leg. Again he was sure she was purposely pulling hair.

Had he the ability, Joker would have gotten up and bolted for the storage room on the other side of the infirmary. Williams was the last person he wanted to see him during his daily EMS therapy session. Sitting as he was in only his underwear—why and how the good doctor seemed to find excuses to undress him for such a routine thing was beyond his comprehension—with wires attached to his legs via hair-pulling patches and without the use of his braces or crutches, he could only wait patiently—or not—until the Chief left.

And it wasn't like he could run very well with his braces or crutches anyway. His previous attempts had all ended in dramatic bouts of pain. And though he lacked any type of medical education, Joker was quite sure he was allergic to pain. The bolt in his right shin from attempting to dance at graduation from flight school still gave him problems from time to time, and there were other various insertions that held his brittle bones together in places.

"Hey, doc." There was a snap-hiss of the dispenser and then a grunt of frustration, the boots shuffled closer and Joker inwardly cringed again. "The candy machine's out."

"I've placed an order with the quartermaster," Chakwas told the younger woman not looking up from applying the electrodes. It wasn't like it would help her not pull what little hair was left on Joker's legs. _Might as well call EMS therapy Free Leg Waxing._ "The Commander said that she would pick them up since she would be in Bachjret Ward later. You may wish to accompany her if your medical interface has completely run dry."

Again, the boots shuffled closer and Gunnery Chief Williams appeared in Joker's peripheral vision. "You alright, Joker?" She appeared to be studying his legs, though he could have sworn her dark eyes darted up and lingered on his bare chest. _Wishful thinking, idiot._

He regarded her from the corner of his vision. "Never better, doll."

Then he visibly winced when the doctor turned on the Evil Electro-Machine of Doom. That wasn't what the doctor called the electronic device to which he was attached, no, but it worked for him. The muscles in his legs began to twitch at the same time as electricity jumped through the electrodes in patterns that simulated exercise. It didn't really hurt; it was more or less an irritating, tingling itch that flared over the entirety of his legs. As usual, the initial jolt was uncomfortable, and no matter that he'd been having this therapy done since his was three and was well prepared for the jolt, it always surprised him. Always.

He hated it. The therapy. The electrodes. The twitchy itch. The braces. The crutches. The questions. The stares. Joker hated it all.

"So, what are you doing?"

He gazed up at the red lights of the overhead momentarily as he rolled his hazel eyes. Oh, yeah. Hated it.

"Exercising." He leaned back on his elbows to relieve some pressure in his pelvis from his feet dangling off the cot. When he looked at her, her eyes weren't on his legs, but on his shoulders and the bunched muscles of his arms. Then her gaze raked across his chest and up to his face. Joker's mouth suddenly went bone dry and the room no longer had an arctic chill. _Not fair._

"Funny way to exercise, isn't it?" And the room went from overly hot to subzero, just like that. This was not on his To-Do List for quality time with Williams. And here he'd been actually looking forward to going to the Embassy Lounge with Alenko.

He studied her a moment, found himself staring at her generous mouth. She was waiting for an answer.

Finally he relented and grumbled, "The gerbil gym isn't my style."

She only raised a brow.

Didn't she know how to take a hint? Irritated that Williams wasn't going to leave him to "exercise" in peace, he sat up and gave her a narrow, glinting glance, annoyance evident in his voice and the way he pointed at her. "Look, you sit on your ass all day and see if the muscles in your legs don't atrophy after awhile."

She blinked at him, surprised. He didn't know if she was surprised with the revelation or the venom in his voice, so he continued for the hell of it, "Compound that with specially built braces that negate the mass of my legs so that I can get around easier and my hips won't break…" He shrugged, pointed to his legs. "No mass, no muscles. Electric Muscle Stimulation." He resisted the urge to say, "duh." She didn't know. This conversation had never come up before.

"Will your hips break if you walk without the braces?"

Joker let out a low groan from the back of his throat. His pelvis was more or less bolted to his spine in places from where he had either fallen as a child or from growing up in general. _Should never have_ —but he did. And now, he really could be an ass because he outranked her. That thought made his day, and he opened his mouth to spout a vat of venom at the unsuspecting Chief, but Dr. Chakwas spoke up.

"Ashley, don't you have a medi-gel patch that needs to be removed?"

Williams blanched. "No way. I'm not stripping." She crossed her arms over her ample chest much like a pouting child would. Naturally, Joker appraised the merchandise without really thinking about it as he wondered where she had been injured that required stripping. Several places came to mind without much effort. The thought heated his blood.

Knowing the doctor, however...

"Now, that's something I'd pay to see," he said with a grin.

The shade her lovely round face turned was just as intriguing as the daggers she glared at him. Joker's day just got a little brighter. Fuck Mikhailovich. The Gunnery Chief was hot when she was angry.

"What?" He cocked his head to the side, wondering what shade she would turn next. "I would."

Yeah, he would definitely be joining Alenko at the Embassy Lounge.


	18. Much Ado about Nothing

As Kaidan and Commander Shepard made their way to a transit station that would take them to the Hawksmoor Barracks, Kaidan took in the sights continuing to marvel at the technological monstrosity that was the Citadel Station. It was a wonder that the Council, made up of only three members, could keep so many species at peace.

Bachjret Ward was crawling with life. Every Citadel Race, humans, hanar, elcor and volus meandered on their way to who knew where. A pack of Keepers scuttled past, ignored by the rest of the species. The green four-legged, four-armed creatures didn't speak, but the packs on their insectoid bodies emitted a sound that grated on Kaidan's ears—almost like scraping a fork against a metal plate.

The light of Widow refracted against the nebula in a cacophony of indigo and violet, casting everything, even the bright lights of the Ward, in a sensuous blue glow. Kaidan felt like he had enveloped himself in dark energy simply by looking around, the distorted blue of the area playing tricks with his retinas. The absence of the subtle fluctuation that signaled a mass effect field was the only thing that let him know that he hadn't inadvertently exercised his mutated nervous system.

A particularly vocal hanar street vendor was pushing human-made, salarian-modified watches. Kaidan was relieved when a herd of elcor meandered in between the vendor and his and the Commander's positions. Until the pheromones they used to communicate reached his nose and… lingered. Their communication was subtle, but the odor of the pheromones definitely was not. The musky rust scent was punctuated by an earthy overtone. It was just strong enough to nearly gag him. He was quick to step away.

Shepard's cough caught his attention as he shrugged under the weight of his seabag and moved along side her. "I don't think I'll ever get used to their smell," she mused quietly, giving another cough and bringing a slender hand up to fend off the offending odor. She looked at him peculiarly. "Can you imagine what they must think about our scent?"

"I—I've never thought about it before, ma'am." Leave it to Shepard to surprise the hell out of him. He definitely had never met anyone like her.

She smiled. "What's that really old expression? 'Think outside the box,' Kaidan." She looked like she was about to say more, but then cocked her head to the side, bringing her hand up to shield her ear from the noise of the Wards. "Shepard here. How can I help you, Ambassador?" A frown formed on her face, a line drawn across her brow as the Ambassador spoke to her on her personal comm. frequency.

Shepard swiped her hand over the biometric pad at the transit allowing it to deduct the proper amount of credits from her Spectre bank account. They boarded the transit, choosing seats as close to each other as possible, but as far away from several elcor as they could. It was interesting to see that asari and salarians also avoided sitting too close, but the volus—in their protective ammonia-scented suits—and the turians didn't seem to notice. A krogan barged in at the last minute, causing a stir with crowded patrons. The large obviously-annoyed being didn't appear to notice, merely reaching up and grabbing the railing with his three-digit hand.

Kaidan diverted his attention back to Shepard and watched as his commander's pale face colored a bit as she adopted a thunderous expression, her eyes cutting to his. "I'll be there shortly, sir," she told her comm. in a tone that was anything but pleasant. She stood and reached up and grabbed the overhead railing, moving until she was standing beside him.

"Something wrong, Commander?" he asked arching his neck up to look at her as she gazed down at him, one hand clutching the overhead railing.

"I've got to cancel tonight, Alenko," she told him in a grudging tone. They were going for drinks right after they dropped off their gear.

He felt his face fall. _Cancelling?_ He forced a smile and kept his voice neutral. "It's alright, ma'am. I understand."

Shepard gazed at him, her odd-colored eyes perusing his frame as he sat there crowded between two chatty salarians and brusque turian. Her eyes swept over his face, his shoulders, his legs, heating his blood. She was quiet a moment before speaking. "You're disappointed."

He considered her tone, her statement. She was a very hard woman to read. The initial curiosity was still there but it was mingled with something that Kaidan couldn't put his finger on. There were regs against what he suspected it might be so he put the thought aside and answered her honestly.

"Yes," he admitted. "Not everyone gets to buy the first human Spectre a drink, Commander."

Her musical chuckle made him feel somewhat better.

"After meeting with Udina and telling Kahoku his men have died," she said soberly, "I'm going to need a drink, Lieutenant."

"Well, you can still join us after—" he started, then stopped when he realized what she said. "I can go with you if you need me, ma'am."

She blinked. "You have Liberty, Kaidan. Use it."

He shook his head. "There will be time for personal leave after we take care of—" he looked around—"of business, Commander. I'm here if you need me. If… if you want me to go with you, just say the word."

The transit craft landed, and they disembarked in relative silence. Kaidan wondered if she would tell him to go to hell or if she would take him up on his offer of support. A flicker of apprehension coursed through him as he reflected on his statement. Was he being too forward? Did she think that he was trying to push the regs farther than they were meant to go? That really wasn't the case. They'd been serving a month together in extenuating circumstances. As her detail commander, Kaidan felt it was more of a duty to accompany her on missions. As far as he was concerned, meeting with Kahoku completed the mission.

Meeting with Udina? Well, that… that he was doing as a friend.

Kaidan didn't particularly care for the Ambassador. As a biotic, he stayed current with politics only because some of the decisions Parliament made affected him directly. The Ambassador's attitude continually grated his nerves. At least Shepard had the advantage of getting a one up on the older man when they had delivered Tali and her information to him and Captain Anderson. The expression on Udina's face when Shepard had told him to shut up had been well worth any reminders of their positions. Shepard, of course, had been quick to remind Udina that she was out risking her neck to expose Saren and a rocky truce had been formed between Commander and Ambassador.

Kaidan and Shepard produced their identification cards for the guard on duty and received a sharp salute each. Once they were on the elevator to the quarters assigned to the _Normandy_ 's crew, Shepard broke the silence.

"I could use the support, Alenko," she admitted finally as the cheerful but nauseating music of the elevator droned on.

He nodded, relieved that she wanted him to go. "When's your meeting?"

"As soon as I drop off my gear." Shepard's brows drew downward in a frown as her left wrist beeped. She powered up her omni-tool, texting something.

"I'll drop off my gear and go with you then," he told her. She looked up from her texting, the amber light of the device casting her in an ethereal glow, a small smile playing on her mouth. He drew his lips in thoughtfully as he took her in.

Then he noticed that she had upgraded her omni-tool, and he suddenly felt like a geek.

"Is that the new Kassa Polaris?" he inquired, moving closer to study the tools' fabber. It was larger than his Logic Arrest, but he remembered that the microcomputer's nanoprocessor didn't have enough yottahertz to handle shields over two-fifty strength. He wondered at that: if Shepard had had to adapt her biotics around the lack of strength in shielding. It would explain what had happened on Feros. He was still hesitant to ask her about her capabilities.

Her smile deepened, warming the deep green flakes in the copper of her eyes, and Kaidan felt like his knees would give out. "Burns found it today. It's better than the damn Chameleon I had. The fabber's a little bigger, but I'm not into hacking anymore, so it's not like I need the extra yotts."

"'Anymore?'" His eyebrows rose inquiringly.

She shrugged. "What I get for dating an Infiltrator." He did not want to know. _No_ , he did not. Her former liaisons were none of his – A bead of black took shape around his heart. Was she seeing someone? "What's your model?" Shepard tilted her head to his left arm.

He powered up his omni-tool, overly eager to not only show off his toy, but to not talk about Shepard's intimacies—either previous or ongoing. He doubted he would get much out of her anyway. _An Infiltrator?_ "Ariake Logic Arrest."

"Eight decimal one decimal seven?" She asked as she studied the model. Then she smiled knowingly up at him. "We're such nerds."

He laughed at that. "So we are." He studied her a moment. Her hair, akimbo as always, had taken on a rust-colored hue under the amber glow of the tools. The glow also highlighted the three prominent scars on her face, the cut on her upper lip, one just above her eye that dissected her right eyebrow, and the strange-shaped one just below her left eye. Another scar showed up, hidden from view by the bangs that normally hung on her forehead, but she had pushed them aside and tucked them behind her ear. It was also on her right side and kind of looked like two claws had managed to get past her defenses.

"When are you meeting with Kahoku?" he inquired when he was sure she was done studying the Logic Arrest.

She sighed. "I haven't decided whether I should go before or after."

"You could have told Fifth Fleet Command to relay—"

"Like Hell," she interrupted, her face a stormy cloud. "If they were your men and you asked me to investigate, Alenko, how the hell would you feel to hear it from someone other than me?"

He raised his hands in surrendered as she grumpily powered down her Polaris. "I spoke out of turn, Commander. It won't happen again."

Her face remained stormy as the elevator doors cycled open and they exited. They found the quarters, and Kaidan was surprised that the entire crew had been assigned to the same room. Normally, men and women were kept separated for privacy issues. Too much gawking with the younger soldiers or something. Apparently Mikhailovich had no reservations in throwing them in altogether. _This was going to be interesting._

"I'm not the one who matters, Alenko," she told him quietly as she tossed her seabag on a bunk.

Knowing how rumors got started so easily, he chose a bunk that was on the far side of the room. "You do matter, Commander," he told her just as quietly, walking back and standing beside her. "You—you told Jenkins family personally, didn't you?"

"Anderson did." She shook her head. "I was still out when he made the vid-mail. The Sole Survivor strikes again."

"His death wasn't your fault, Commander."

"I'm sure his family sees it differently." She sighed and held up a hand to quell the protest that was forming on his lips. "Let's go to the Embassies."

He nodded and followed his commanding officer out the door.


	19. Fukitol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Now with more sexual tension… I just hope I didn't take away Shepard's bad-assery. D: Liberties taken with in-game dialog… as if it weren't obvious by now… heh Also, Dr. Michel's appearance has been changed. For this story, she's full figured. It just came out like that for some reason. (Here's where I beg for more suspended disbelief. Let's play pretend, okay?)_
> 
> _**AND Thank yous:** _ _Thank you, each and every one of you, for reading and following this thing. Thank you, gals/guys, who have been kind enough to review. Love you to pieces._

Shepard and Alenko were stepping off the elevator when Williams entered Hawksmoor—sea bag thrown over her shoulder, looking pissed. Shepard studied her subordinate. Wearing the standard issue Blues, Williams appeared shorter than she really was; the top of her black-haired head came to Shepard's brow. Her manicured eyebrows were drawn down into an impressive frown, her lips pinched into a snarl.

"What got your panties in a twist, Chief?" Shepard asked just to see her subordinate's reaction. It did good to keep the younger woman on her toes, and besides, the Chief had been giving Shepard and Alenko knowing looks since Eden Prime. _All's fair in love and war._

Williams' scowl evaporated and she tilted her brow, looking at her commanding officer uncertainly, but one look at the grin stretching over Alenko's lips relaxed her somewhat. She gave an exasperated sigh, bunching her fingers together and pointing back over her shoulder with her thumb. "Jerk at the door," was all she said forcing remote dignity into her voice. "Heading to the Embassies, ma'am?"

"Ambassador Udina has called a meeting," Shepard affirmed with a frown. "We'll meet you at the Lounge when we get done."

Williams snorted. "If you two don't show up, should I grab the krogan and come in guns blazing?"

"Sure, why not?" Shepard laughed. "Just be sure to tell them that humanity's first Spectre gave the order."

"Aye, aye, Commander," the Chief said with a laugh of her own before excusing herself and stepping onto the elevator. "I'm sure that will go over just as well as a volus skin vid featuring Blasto the hanar," she chortled as the doors closed.

* * *

Tayseri Ward was just as busy and crowded as Bachjret Ward when Shepard and Alenko stepped off the transit by the med clinic where Shepard had told Dr. Chakwas she would check on—and possibly pick up—an order of candy sticks for the dispenser in the infirmary before Rear Admiral Mikhailovich's crew went through everything with a fine tooth comb. Normally, such trivial items were left up to the ship's quarter master, but the Commander had needed to purchase a few medical mods for her armor anyway, and since the access to Tayseri Ward was closer to Bachjret Ward than to the Embassies on the Presidium Ring, it was decided that she and Alenko would stop by Dr. Michel's clinic first and then continue on to meet with Ambassador Udina.

Now, Shepard had known that traveling with an all elcor tourist group was going cause havoc with her olfactory glands but she had no idea it would be _this_ bad. It wasn't quite _eau de week-old dead body_ , but it was pretty damn close. If she had to label the stench it would be something like: Sulfuric, rusty arm pits with a touch of mission socks after wearing them for six missions straight. Just strong enough to knock out the wind but not strong enough to gag her.

Shepard studied her companion, his profile, under the blue-tinted light of Widow as they waded through alien and a few human pedestrians. She found that she liked Alenko's straight nose and the shadow of stubble on his face that stood out under the blue light. She knew what it was like to have beard burn during sex and wondered what it would be like to be with him—if he were an aggressive lover or a tender lover. Or if he were seeing anyone back home. That thought cooled her jets somewhat. After she and, and Gerry had split—she quickly brought her mind to other things with a mental shake of her head. Why was Gerry suddenly back on her mind? That was two years ago. She mentally kicked herself for even bringing up dating an infiltrator in front of Alenko.

She was aware of her lieutenant as the capable man she knew him to be. They were mere inches apart. Heat radiated off the man in waves. She found his nearness both disturbing and exciting. But after seven minutes of elcor pheromone transit hell, the poor biotic looked ready to pass out or vomit. She hoped her detail commander wasn't on the verge of a headache. She needed him, his support—for him to be there when she met with the damn ambassador and Kahoku.

Something cautioned her not to inquire into the lieutenant's health. For the short time she'd known him, Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko had remained aloof around her, especially when it came to his implant and his migraines. With the exception of sticking his foot in his mouth at odd times and her singling him out after debriefings, Kaidan continued to keep to himself while off duty. She'd noticed right away that he appeared to be noticeably uncomfortable when eating around others, and beside the one time she had asked him to eat with her, she left him to his own devices at meal times.

His offering to buy her a drink on their liberty was a surprise. He had appeared just as surprised as she when he'd asked. She doubted it was planned. Another insertion of a foot, perhaps?

Or was he smoother than he appeared, and she was falling for the act, a nagging little voice questioned from her mind's eye.

She swallowed. Surely not. She was more observant than that, wasn't she? An old insecurity surfaced and stabbed at her heart. Not Kaidan. She wasn't just a bottle full of hormones, she affirmed to herself as she studied him as they pushed their way through the crowd. She could trust him, right? For a split second, she felt just as vulnerable as she had on Akuze. For a split second she felt a paralyzing realization. No amount of mods or an upgraded amp could protect her from Kaidan.

_Wait._

What was she doing? She wondered suddenly, firmly bringing the subject to a close. Where were these thoughts coming from? Alenko was her _subordinate_. It didn't matter what he thought of her or what she thought of him. He was safe because he was off limits. No matter how much they flirted on the battlefield. _Off limits._ Off limits was good.

Thinking about it, Shepard realized that had Williams not spoken up when she did, Shepard was certain it would have just been herself and her detail commander and an air of awkwardness. Now their get-together was a foursome as Alenko had asked Joker to join them. And the Commander would use that opportunity to her advantage. It would give her a chance to get to know her crew better. And it might keep Alenko and her out of the lower deck rumors. That was the idea anyway.

* * *

As Kaidan and Shepard walked the short distance to the entrance of Dr. Michel's clinic from the transit terminal, Kaidan felt wave after wave of nausea. Elcor stank. There was no nice way to say it. Stinky elephantine sloths with no discernible mouths and with nostrils on the tops of their heads. And having been crammed into a transit with a tourist group of fourteen was too much. This was how they communicated? He swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat and followed his commander to the med clinic as he wondered how Shepard could ignore the odor so calmly.

He side stepped a rushed salarian and a gaggle of hanar as they floated by, their bioluminescent speech causing havoc with his retinas. He thumbed off his translator and ignored them. The tale-tale sign of a migraine was beginning in his shoulders. He knew that the discomfort would climb up his neck and turn into pain if he didn't do anything about it. Hopefully, Dr. Michel had cheap pain killers for sale without an exam.

He wished he were wearing his gear. But right now, in only Blues, he knew he was going to be in for a world of hurt later. At least his gear had a medical interface. He had tweaked the interface to distribute loxal, a generic beta blocker, whenever the processor detected an increase in the constriction of blood vessels around his brain. The interface was also configured to detect the pulses the implant gave off whenever he marshaled his nervous system to initiate a barrier and compensate with another beta blocker and pain killer automatically. Putting up a barrier was always worse; the amplified dark energy was put into a constant feedback loop. The most important aspect of combat was defense. Without the pain killer and other beta blocker, he'd be screwed during combat. _Oh, the irony_ , Kaidan thought derisively, then realized that was how Shepard had burned out her amp.

A flash caught his eye and he turned to find Shepard studying him. Fortunately, the flash was only Widow reflecting off an air car and not a tracer against his retinas, but his belly did a flip when their eyes met. His lips quirked of their own accord and for a moment, something flashed in his commander's eyes. The very air around her seemed electrified and for the briefest of moments, Kaidan thought she might shove him against the wall and kiss him. His heart lurched madly, knowing he was in trouble and loving it anyway. Then Shepard's eyes slid away, and she strode purposely towards the doctor, the moment ended.

What the hell was that? he wanted to know. Was he reading her wrong? He took several calming breaths before setting his mind back to the task at hand.

The med clinic was operated by Dr. Chloe Michel. She was a short, stout woman with short auburn hair interwoven with silver strands and piercing green eyes. The marines had met her once before when they were searching for evidence against Saren. It had been a big break that Dr. Michel had patched up Tali and learned that Tali had information about the geth.

"I _can't_ ," Dr. Michel was telling the comm on the wall. "I need those supplies for my clinic."

"You can and you will, doc, or your little secret will be out," a menacing voice growled.

Shepard and Kaidan shared a look—one without heat. This was the second time they had been here and the second time they had found someone threatening her. The doctor flipped off the comm in disgust then turned to find them. Surprised, her hands flew to her throat.

"Commander, I didn't see you come in." She walked to her desk and picked up a data pad. "I assume you're here for the medi-gel. Your medical officer didn't tell me that you personally were coming. I thought perhaps your logistics officer was picking it up."

Shepard studied the doctor closely. "Every time I come in here, someone's threatening you. Who was that?"

"Oh, just someone from my past," the doctor said, replacing the data pad on the desk and wringing her fingers.

"Sounds like he doesn't like you," Kaidan commented.

"They want over twelve thousand credits worth of medical supplies." Dr. Michel sighed and paced as she spoke. "They're blackmailing me."

Shepard said nothing, only crossed her arms over her chest.

When it became obvious to the doctor that the Spectre was waiting for her to continue she sighed again and elaborated, "I was fired from my old job for giving medical supplies away to clinics like this one. No charges were ever filed. I was just asked to leave quietly."

 _Clinics like this one?_ Kaidan wondered. Then it dawned on him. Dr. Michel didn't ask questions. That was why Tali had come to here to get patched up. That was why Garrus and a crime lord had known her. He looked at Shepard, studied her profile, her pert nose, her plush lips. As unreadable as ever.

The Commander cocked her head to the side. "If no charges were filed, how are they able to blackmail you?"

Dr. Michel frowned, putting a hand in her short graying auburn hair. "I never reported it to the board. If the board were to find out now, I could lose my license. They would shut my clinic down." The doctor shook her head, looked desperate. "I have to give them want." Her voice was tight and drawn.

"I'll help you," Shepard spoke up after a moment of thinking about it. Kaidan really wasn't surprised. Hell, she'd helped the Consort and a C-Sec officer tame an unruly hanar. Why wouldn't she help a doctor of an almost-illegal clinic?

Dr. Michel was surprised though. Her thin brows rose. "Really?"

"Who's your contact?"

* * *

"Welcome to Morlan's famous shop," the salarian behind the counter greeted with exuberance. "You want great many things, yes?" Kaidan blinked. It was surprising when an alien spoke Galactic and not their own language for the translator to pick up. Sometimes, it was confusing.

This being was short for a salarian – as tall as the Commander – and his toothy smile and filmy eyes were unsettling. Kaidan assumed this was Morlan. There was no other salarian at the shop. The cadence of Morlan's speech grated on the biotic's nerves, the pain in his shoulders stabbing its way to the base of his skull where the demon of an implant sucked it in and seemed to amplify it.

This was going to be a bitch of a migraine. Kaidan wondered, apprehensively, if he would be able to function properly for very much longer. In a few minutes he expected to start salvating when his body would start to react to the pain.

Shepard wasted no time getting to the crux of the matter. Leaning against the counter, she cast her copper-colored eyes about the establishment, noting the exits, the patrons, the weapons. Everyone was armed to the teeth. It didn't get past her that her lieutenant was looking pale. A fine sheen of perspiration was visible above his upper lip, a bead of sweat dripped down his brow. He would fight if he had to, and she knew he would do his job properly. But as much as she wanted to grab the salarian by the throat and threaten him, she wasn't about to risk a fire fight when her backup might not be able to back himself up.

"Looking for Morlan," she said casually unclipping her pistol and placing it on the counter, fingers in the grips, nodding for Kaidan to be ready.

The salarian, in typical salarian fashion, was ever so pleased to be of assistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Brief note:** _ _If there is really a drug called loxal, I apologize. I was really just throwing together letters and didn't bother to look it up. I did however look up beta blockers and other preventative migraine words._


	20. Barriers

Planting a gloved hand on a hip-high rock, Liara vaulted it, her booted foot slipping on a loose rock and she went down hard.

_Goddess, no._

Scrambling back to her feet, the asari maiden tore away from the krogan and the geth in pursuit, doing her best to avoid the slugs that rebounded against her biotic shield and around her. A volley of fire sounded to her left and reflexively ducked away and increased her biotic shield as she ran. Her ankle, not broken, but tender from the incorrect landing, protested as she surged around the large mining laser, slugs impacting all around her.

Gasping for breath, eyes darting around the dig site, her mind whirled as she thought of what to do. How was she going to get out of this one? At least with litigation, someone else did the talking for her. And why was she still breathing? These were sentient machines and a _krogan_. Surely, their aim was better.

 _Leading—no,_ herding _me somewhere._ The thought disgusted her. Her blue eyes fell on the archway two stories up even as she panted, her chest aching from the exertion of running.

_Prothean barrier curtains._

She'd studied them. Liara knew how to operate them. Would they withstand mass accelerated weapons, though? The geth were closing in. No time to think. She pushed herself off the mining laser and sprinted towards the scaffold ramp. _At least it's not stairs_ , she thought as she gasped for breath and rock particles rained down on her. Her ankle throbbed, but she had little inclination to pay attention to it. They were shooting around her, not at her now. _Goddess, give me strength._

Her luck ran out when the krogan got impulsive and lobed a concussion grenade near the platform. Liara bolted, rolled and landed with a thump near the barrier curtain controls, smacking her head against the unyielding marmoreal surface of the Prothean construct. Her vision blurred momentarily as she fought to push herself up, remind herself what was happening.

She had time to think one word— _grenade_ —before the object in question exploded. The sound was deafening and she cradled her head against the shock of it, curling behind the control booth. Choking on the clouds of smoke and dirt, she latched onto the controls, heaving herself up and activating them. A blue force field erected itself against the entrance of the ruins in a split second after activation, blocking her pursuers. The krogan cursed in his guttural language. Her translator picked up a few words that made her blush just as her vision blurred again, her lids heavy.

Her body trembled with fatigue. She wanted nothing more than to simply sleep, but she wasn't safe. She had to…had to get out, to get to safety. Had to…

With the last of her strength, she crawled away from the controls that were now emitting a loud whining noise. The krogan was pounding on the blue filmy shield. A geth troop fired a shot at the barrier and Liara cringed away. The mass accelerated round ricocheted off and hit one its fellow troops. Liara felt a grin forming on her lips, but was suddenly jerked up by another field. The whining noise stopped.

_Oh, terrif—_

Liara passed out before the thought was complete.

* * *

"What's wrong, Doll?"

Ash looked up from her data pad, sending a glare across the barracks to the irritation on crutches. _Doll?_ Just because she indulged him earlier while he was hooked up to that weird machine— Never again was she going to give into magical girly whims. _Bastard._

"Do you want your legs broken?" she asked sweetly. Belatedly she added, "Sir."

Joker studied her a moment, his face a mask of calm. "I have a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it, Williams," he said flatly, his eyes bits of green stone. He lifted his hand away from a crutch to quickly point to her white-knuckled hands and then latch back on before the low-gravity took hold. It was a fluid movement. She couldn't help but marvel at his dexterity. "You're choking the life out of your data pad."

Ash's dark eyes dropped to her hands, and she loosened the death grip on her data pad. Who would have thought the damn man was so observant? She watched him move across the room, his eyes searching for a rack of his liking that wasn't already taken. It struck her as strange that he had a certain degree of grace as he moved with perfect ease on his crutches and braces.

His words spoken earlier came unbidden to her brain. _No mass, no muscles._ How could he stand it? What made him get up in the mornings? She gave herself a mental shake. Those were dangerous questions. Those types of questions were reserved for—well, not _him_. Joker was a pain in the ass.

To her dismay, he chose the rack right next to hers, a grin on his face. Was Joker trying to piss her off? She was already angry with the MP from the Hawksmoor entrance. The idiot's derisive remark about her grandfather had sent her blood boiling, and she was still seething over it.

"You didn't answer my question." Joker slung his sea bag off his shoulder and onto the bunk.

She studied her data pad without seeing the email birthday card from her mother. "My prerogative."

He snorted, sitting on the thin mattress, rubbing his thighs. "Indulge me. We're about to get piss-faced anyway." Ash watched his hands move then bit her lip and looked away as she recalled his bare chest and shoulders and the electro-patches attached to his thin legs. _Fucking girly whims._ Just because she'd seen him half naked her hormones decided to react. If she'd had her choice, it would be Alenko. _Gah! Where'd that come from?_

"Jerk at the door." She shrugged at his questioning eyebrow and steered the conversation away, her face never giving away her inner turmoil. "The Commander and the Lieutenant were called into a meeting with Ambassador Udina. They'll be joining us later."

He grinned at her and Ash braced herself for another derisive remark. "How much do you want to bet that the Commander was called into a meeting and Alenko invited himself along?"

It was Ash's turn to snort at him. "Who on the ship is going to bet against that?"

"Jealous?"

She glared at him. "You really do want your legs broken, don't you?"

Joker only laughed at her. "All the confirmation I needed, Doll."


	21. Asari Slurpies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This ended up going in a different direction than originally intended, but I liked the chapter title too much to change it. heh_

The transit VI had taken one look at them through whatever sensor sensed them and stated that the excess of body fluids was not permitted on the transit and had not allowed them to get on the vehicle. Now, Kaidan, who was bloody, beaten, nursing a migraine and fighting hard not to wretch, was stuck in an elevator heading towards the Presidium with a pissed off commanding officer, a rather smug krogan, two hanar and a volus. It didn't help matters that the "negotiations" in the market between Morlan, the commander and a krogan blackmailer went south just as soon as Wrex had shown up.

Not that it wasn't already heading in that direction. Kaidan admired Shepard's direct approach to everything, but sweet-talking a krogan merc who wanted money or a fight (with a really doubtful "or") was a little beyond her abilities. No way in hell would he ever tell her that. To tell Commander Shepard that she couldn't do something was just asking for trouble. He'd known the woman a month and had that vibe by day one. _What a woman._

Kaidan had never expected to fight a krogan on his day off. He especially never expected to fight an armored krogan _unarmored_ on his day off. It was just his good fortune that the Lieutenant had reflexively tucked his talon into his boot. He figured had he not, then he would have died when the krogan had charged him like a rhino. Kaidan had seen first hand what unarmored sentients looked like after being mowed over by krogan mercs, and it wasn't pretty. _Thank God for knives_ , he thought through the throbbing of his head.

Kinetic barriers were designed to deflect particles travelling relativistic speeds. Not a slow human with a knife. Years of hand-to-hand combat experience had paid off when Kaidan had sliced through the scaly hide of the merc as he charged past, slashing the jugular, and dowsing the Lieutenant and his commanding officer in warm orange blood.

The memory made him want to gag. Normally, such things could be compartmentalized and handled later. At the moment though, the thought of blood—especially being covered in it—did nothing to help him not want to puke. Colors danced and weaved before his eyes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. This was lucky? Maybe…maybe being crazy would have been better.

He quickly shot that idea out the airlock. No way in hell. The very thought made him shudder. _I cannot be crazy. No. No_. _There's nothing worse._ Kaidan breathed a deep cleansing breath, shutting his eyes against the dim lights of the elevator as he thought back to the last half hour.

Dr. Michel had given the Commander a discount on mods and supplies for the _Normandy_ and had offered him free treatment for his migraine after the Commander had explained why they were beaten, bloody and covered in krogan blood.

When the doctor had pressed, Shepard had looked at her and told her the blunt truth. "He's dead. You won't have any more trouble from that one."

"Oh," the doctor had said, wide eyed. "I didn't mean for anyone to get killed."

Shepard had shrugged as if she killed blackmailers on a daily basis. "Shit happens. The thug said he worked for a man named Banes. Sound familiar?"

"Banes?" Dr. Michel had looked thoughtful a moment. "I wonder if he means Armistan Banes. We worked together a long time ago."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"Last I heard the Alliance Military had contracted him to do some research in the Traverse."

Kaidan had spoken up then. "I wonder if the Captain knows him."

Shepard had nodded and replied, "We'll see what the Captain can tell us when we go speak with Udina." Then she had worked out the deal to get medi-gel for their immediate injuries, discounts and Kaidan's happy pills.

And, yeah, now that the meds had kicked in, he was feeling pretty good. The elevator music even had a little pep to it. Too bad the meds hadn't fully taken away the pain. It radiated from the top of his skull, skulked around his implant and throbbed across the back of his head in widening arcs of agony. But he felt good about it.

Yeah. A painful happy.

He blinked a few times, tracers and auras shrouding his vision. His head not only hurt but it felt like it was going to fall off his shoulders. Pain killers were supposed to kill pain. These… weren't doing a damn thing. Except make him feel weird and dizzy and weird and… _What the hell_ were _those?_

He must have groaned or grunted or made some kind of sound because Shepard's coppery eyes were on him—again. He felt good about that too. She'd gazed at him several times during the walk from the Wards to the elevator. He silently congratulated himself on knowing when she was looking at him.

Of course it helped that he was standing there staring right at her with his mouth open. He wondered absently when he had last remembered to swallow. Drooling in front of his commanding officer wouldn't bode well for his six month Eval. It also helped that the commander was surrounded by a purple and gold aura—courtesy of his current migraine—and whenever she shifted, so did the color. Throwing up on her boots wouldn't help his six month Eval either, he reminded himself, snapping his mouth closed and swallowing the bile.

His eyes drooped a bit. _I want to throw up._

"You look rough," she commented, stepping closer as the two hanar and the volus exited the elevator. He hadn't even realized the elevator had stopped.

Rough? He wondered and looked down at his torn and bloodied standard issue uniform. _Oh._ Kaidan blinked. _They were in a fight._

"With a krogan," she supplied, a wry smile twisting her lips—her bottom lip split and swollen from where the krogan had grazed her mouth with his fist. Did she just—

"Did I say that out loud?" he questioned around cotton-mouth, suddenly wondering what else had slipped out.

Shepard gazed at him, studying his eyes, his face. "Dr. Michel said those pills would knock you for a loop. She didn't say anything about memory loss."

"I remember the fight, ma'am," Kaidan assured her, the gory details vivid in his mind's eye. "Consider my loop knocked."

From beside them, Wrex chuckled. "Well, well, the lieutenant got knocked up." He clapped Shepard on the back. "Let's see how well those meds the good doctor put him on react to a good pint of ale. Might have another good fight." He looked eager—more so than usual.

Shepard's eyes cut to the lone krogan battle master as they exited the elevator before the doors shut. "We don't need a fight in the _Embassy Lounge_ , Wrex" she told him as though explaining it to a small child. "I wasn't expecting the one in the markets. And as much as I appreciated you being there, showing up and spouting off about that thug's parentage did _not_ help us."

"At all," Kaidan added.

"The Lounge?" Wrex sounded sorely disappointed, but his body language was relaxed as he completely ignored the chiding from the two humans. His mind was only on two things—fighting and drinking. "All they have is that nasty turian grog… or asari slurpies." Were it possible for a krogan to shudder, then that's what Wrex did. Kaidan couldn't be sure though. "You want good ale: go to the Den or one of the casinos. Flux usually stocks some of the best."

"'Asari slurpies?'" Kaidan asked, amused and dismayed at the same time.

Wrex shrugged. "Fermented nectar of some kind of fruit on some kind of tree on some planet of theirs."

Shepard nodded. "Descriptive."

"You humans and your descriptions," Wrex said with a shake of his head. "Ask a bartender if you want the name of the damn fruit and tree and nectar. Damn fruity cocktail if you ask me. The only good thing to come out of an asari is a commando." He nodded to himself. "Damn good fight," he said absently. "Damn good."

* * *

"Shepard, you'd better have a good explanation for—" Udina broke off his rant when he actually got a good look at humanity's first Spectre. The woman was covered in what looked to be orange film; her clothing was mussed; and she had a swollen lip and a gash on the side of her face held together with medi-gel. Her detail commander looked worse.

And she had brought that krogan, Urdnot Wrex with her. The Ambassador sighed. _This meeting will go well_ , he thought sardonically.

"Do I want to know?" he questioned.

"Probably not," Shepard told him. She was silent a moment before speaking again. "I thought word travelled faster. You should have already heard about it by now."

The Ambassador frowned. "The shopkeeper from 'Morlan's Famous Shop' has issued a complaint."

"The shopkeeper named Morlan, a krogan merc, and someone named Banes were blackmailing Dr. Chloe Michel in Tayseri Ward," the Commander replied smoothly standing at ease as she delivered her report. "I was unable to convince the krogan to stop, and he attacked us. Morlan did not provide any useful information once the krogan was subdued."

"Subdued? Shepard, we have a dead krogan mercenary, a civilian complaint and several weapons violations filed against the Embassy. Subdued." Udina crossed his arms and shook his head. "File an official report when you get back on duty," he ordered. "Captain Anderson can handle the details of that."

"Yes, sir. You wanted to speak with me?"

"I read your reports on Feros," he told her, sitting down at his desk and holding up the data pad with her report. He frowned slightly when she and her lieutenant sat across from him. Did they know how much those chairs cost the Alliance? He frowned mightier when their krogan comrade made his way toward the balcony. "If we had known anything about the Thorian, ExoGeni would have never been given the permits to start a colony there. Thank God the colony survived. We can't afford to have too many failures out in the Traverse. It's one of our major expansion regions."

 _Expansion?_ Shepard thought, anger swelling, _who the hell does he think he is? Is that all he cares about?_

"You don't give a damn about the colonists," she growled the accusation before she could stop herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alenko look at her worriedly. "It's all just politics to you, isn't it?"

"We can't all be the hero that comes riding in to save the day, Commander," Udina told her, his voice clipped. "But we each serve humanity in our own way."

Shepard rolled her eyes. She was out there fighting. Kahoku had lost men to a damn trap on Edolus, and those colonists on Feros—that damn corporation experimented on those colonists. They had been there trying to make a better life for themselves. Shepard gritted her teeth.

"You can't escape interstellar politics, Shepard," the Ambassador continued unaware of Shepard's anger. "It's part of the bigger picture. And some of it isn't pretty."

"Do you have any idea what we were up against? What we had to do to survive?" she questioned, leaning forward.

"As I said," Udina replied coolly, "I read your reports."

The Commander stood and Kaidan followed. He was beginning to understand why Shepard stayed out of politics. It was so damn frustrating. Kaidan was relieved that Captain Anderson had walked in on the conversation.

"Just ignore him," the Captain told them as Udina stalked off in a huff. "The Ambassador is a little bitter sometimes. Comes with the job."

Shepard nodded as he handed her a data pad. She frowned. "This isn't a good idea, Anderson," she told him quietly.

"You need to get off that rock and move your ass here. There are more benefits to having a centrally located base of operations."

She sighed. "I'll look into it." She didn't look pleased. "What do you know about Armistan Banes?"

Captain Anderson stood riveted to his spot for a moment. "Where the hell did you hear that name?" he demanded before thinking better of it. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

"So you know him?" Kaidan inquired.

"Forget about Banes," the Londoner told them swiping at the air with his hand. "Banes is dead."

Shepard processed this information calmly then responded, "The thugs we ran into seemed to think he was alive."

Anderson shrugged. "We've been keeping it under wraps. He was involved in some top secret research for the Alliance out in the Traverse. His body turned up a few weeks before the Eden Prime incident."

Incident? Kaidan wondered, but kept his mouth shut.

"Admiral Kahoku sent a team of Ns to search for clues near where the body was found. They've been missing for weeks."

"We found them," Shepard told him grimly. "They were killed by a thresher maw on Edolus. It, it was a trap." She explained the mission and the Alliance beacon as she called up her report using her Omni-tool and uploaded it to the Captain's via LinkCom.

Anderson reacted in shock as he listened. "My God, Shepard. Did you lose anyone?" He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder even as she shook her head in the negative. Kaidan felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He took deep breaths to keep from yelling at Captain Anderson.

"No, sir," she announced, "My team did well. Traumatized but otherwise unharmed."

"You must be proud."

The Commander gave a small nod as Anderson removed his hand. "Where can I find the Admiral? Have you seen him around? I should tell him about his team."

"He's gone home for the day," the Captain told her. "Try back tomorrow morning around oh-nine-hundred. He's been trying to get the Ambassador persuade the Council to look into the disappearance using C-Sec or possibly a Spectre." He sounded defeated. "I've already contacted MPAU. They haven't turned up anything. The Admiral's a stubborn old buzzard. You know he's just about as fond of interstellar politics as you are, Shepard. It's a wonder he made Full Bird."

He and Shepard shared a smile. Kaidan shifted uncomfortably.

"Has MPAU even completed the Eden Prime report yet, sir?" he asked. The Military Police Accident Unit was notorious for being slow in their accident investigations.

The Captain shook his head, his eyes coming to rest on Kaidan's face. "It'll be months before I'll see it. Provided it isn't classified, I'll make sure you two have a copy when it comes out."

"I'm a Spectre now, Anderson," Shepard told him with a wry grin. "All I have to do is ask."

The Captain glared at her. "You damn well better ask nicely then."


	22. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Liberties taken with Citadel: Homecoming and a few other things. Made up some "racial" terms for the various aliens, except, of course, "jellies". Wasn't very creative about it, but, meh, most racism isn't anyway. This chapter has taken on an omniscient POV and jumps around from brain to brain a lot. Just a heads-up so there won't be so much confusion. This was a difficult chapter for some reason._

The Presidium was currently entering its nighttime cycle; the glow of the artificial sunset cast the lounge in an orange glow as members of different species' diplomatic corps milled about and chatted. For such a relatively small area, the room was packed with the Council and Non-Council Races alike. Thankfully, Ash and Joker had found a table overlooking the Presidium. A generated breeze wafted the area, keeping the temperature pleasant. The two _Normandy_ crewmembers could see the financial district from across the brightly lit lake.

And Ash? Ash wanted to cry. It was such a girly thing, but, nonetheless, there it was. She couldn't remember ever being so bored, and she had been posted _groundside_ most of her military career because of her name. In fact, this past month had been the most eventful of her entire career. Patrols were never fun, but this… this was… was _stupid!_ You drank to relax. How was _this_ relaxing? There was no music, the room was filled with snooty… aliens—there were only two or three humans out of a whole horde of crown heads, fish heads, stinkers, chubbers, and jellies—and they were all talking in hushed tones…well, except the jellies; they had that shimmer language of theirs. It wasn't even like the room was crowded, and the lounge was full of bodies.

 _There could at least be_ some _noise!_

She huffed and stirred the hot pink drink in front of her, stabbing at the floating bright red cherry with the little green sword that came with it. _Asari Slurpy_ , the bartender said. _Good_ , he said. The only thing good about the Asari Slurpy was the cherry and the little green sword. It was sweet and sour with a spicy kick at the end: some kind of veggie-fruit drink with too much sugar and too much spice. Like a badly mixed Bloody Mary with a melon flavor that set your mouth on fire.

 _Yuck._ Her suspicions were now confirmed that asari had no taste. _That_ was how they could have sex with anything and everything. She was sure of it. _Damn fish heads._

Beside her Joker shifted in his seat. "You've popped that thing a couple of times now, Williams," he commented drily from over the rim of his glass, his eyes twinkling. "Trying to tell me something?"

She rolled her eyes. Couldn't he come up with something less obvious? Joker was weird. She couldn't tell if he was flirting or just being a flirt. He took a swig of his drink, another asari concoction, and made a face. The drink was two-tones of blue and they had already played "trade me" once. Ash liked his and would order it next time. It reminded her of cherry limeade but it had a kick to it at the end. This Asari Slurpy was disgusting.

Ash turned her head and opened her mouth to speak and when she saw the Commander, the Lieutenant, and Wrex walk into the lounge, her mouth dropped open further. They looked like they had gotten into it and Wrex was the winner.

Wondering what had made the normally talkative Chief lose her words, Joker's eyes travelled across the room to where Williams was staring. "Looks like they had more fun than we did," he commented drily, noting with some disbelief that the Alliance Marines' clothing was torn. Of course, fun isn't exactly what he would call it—especially if it had been him. Both officers had bloodied lips, bruises and cuts in various places. Medi-gel was heavily applied to both their faces. And was that blood on their uniforms?

Wrex was with them. Well, for a minute anyway. The krogan promptly stomped over to the bar. All sound in the room stopped as patrons stared at the trio but Joker wasn't sure if they were staring at the filthy Alliance Marines or the krogan. It was probably both.

"Nice shiner," Joker complimented Alenko as he sat heavily. The helmsman noted with some discomfort that the biotic's pupils were undulating, a sign that Joker took as Alenko being higher than a hanar. _What the hell?_ He was sure that was more against Regs than fraternizing was. _Surely, he wouldn't—_ He never would have suspected Alenko of drug abuse. The last biotic he had served with had had an addiction and had gone on a mission under its influence. Joker never wanted to see the results again. Gautier and Gautier's team had been completely decimated because of mistakes and slow response times.

"What the hell happened?" Williams demanded her dark eyes travelling over each of them. Joker got the distinct impression that the Chief felt left out. He couldn't figure out why anyone would _want_ to get the shit kicked out of them, but, hey, to each his—or in Williams' case, her—own. He supposed he could smack her a few times with one of his crutches to make her feel better…

Alenko slurred something incomprehensible, and Shepard looked at him sharply. "Maybe you should head back to the barracks, Lieutenant," she suggested softly. "I'll buy two rounds for everyone tonight. You can make it up to us next Liberty."

He shook his head stubbornly and Joker wondered if the man had realized that he had disobeyed an order—Shepard never really _suggested_ anything. _Probably not._ Before he could open his mouth to comment, Wrex joined them at the table holding what looked like orange juice in his hand.

"Asari Slurpy?" the krogan asked, pointing at the drink in front of Williams with one of his three thick fingers. Wrex seemed… perturbed. He looked at the Commander. "Told you that's all they have," he grumbled, sinking down in the empty chair.

"So, are you going to brief us in on what we missed, Skipper?" Williams asked looking first at Alenko then the krogan and finally the Commander.

Shepard scowled in Wrex's general direction. "Negotiations were not a success," she supplied archly.

"Ookay," Joker drawled shifting in his chair. "Thanks for filling us in, Commander."

It surprised him that Wrex was the one to tell them about the fight in the lower markets. He shrugged as he finished, "Not much of fight. Damn pup thought he was Puntax. Now he's just silver dog grub." The big reptilian looked at Alenko with one eye and then the other and nodded, the corner of his mouth tipping up. "The Lieutenant got through his shields with an itty bitty knife."

Williams gave a low whistle a grin splitting her face. "Damn, L.T., remind me not to turn my back on you." The grin faded as she noticed Alenko wasn't saying anything.

Joker gazed at Alenko. "So what's wrong with Kaidan?" he asked.

"Migraine med," Shepard said, put a hand on Alenko's arm and seemed distressed when the Lieutenant didn't respond right away. When Alenko did respond it was sluggish, his eyes staring sightlessly at Shepard's hand for a few beats before grinning up at her like a little kid who just found out that he was getting a new toy. The Commander frowned slightly and removed her hand. Joker shared a look with Williams over their respective glasses. They were both going to have work on rumor control when they got back to the ship.

"The Lieutenant is knocked up," Wrex supplied, and Joker nearly snorted his drink. Ash, who had been quietly sipping hers, choked.

"Knocked for a loop, Wrex," Shepard corrected over the choking sounds of her crew.

The burly krogan shrugged. "Orange, blue, pink," he stated pointing at each of their drinks, then he indicated the translator built into his armor. "Same thing: The ability to get 'piss-faced' as you humans say." He gulped down his orange-colored liquor and then got up from the table. "Shepard," he grumbled and stamped away.

"Wrex." Shepard's eyes followed the big krogan as he left the Lounge then came to rest on Kaidan again. For the Nth time she wished they were in hard suits. Then she could interface directly with his suit's VI and get a diagnosis of his condition.

"Do you think it'll wear off soon?" Williams asked, poking the Lieutenant a few times with the little green sword that came with her drink. He didn't appear to feel it. Shepard shrugged shaking her head. She knew basic first aid and how to field dress a wound. When it came to pharmaceuticals she was SOL.

"Two drinks and we're out of here," she said and looked at her subordinate, "Williams, I think you and I might have to carry him out of here.

Ash frowned, "Yes, ma'am." The Chief hoped the nearly unconscious man didn't throw up on her. Kaidan looked a little green. She opened her mouth to make a sarcastic comment but there was suddenly a loud ruckus across the room and the three coherent officers turned to see what the commotion was all about.

"But she is my wife!" a middle-aged dark-skinned man shouted at a younger pale-skinned man. "I demand you release her body!" His rich Indian accent carried through the bar and, as with the Alliance Marines and Wrex' entrance, most of the patrons' conversations stopped. The younger man was backing away.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bhatia," he said in placating manner, "what has happened to you is truly tragic, but I can't help you."

 _Bhatia?_ Ash was on her feet and striding towards the two immediately. _Is that who I think it is?_

"You will release—" the man named Mr. Bhatia began.

The Commander, whom Ash didn't realize had followed her, spoke up, cutting off his tirade, "Is there a problem here?"

The younger man recognized her immediately. "My goodness! You're Commander Shepard!" Ash thought the young man might wet himself. He didn't seem very much older than her or the Commander.

Shepard crossed her arms and nodded.

"Clerk Bosker, ma'am," he introduced himself, extending his hand. The Commander looked at his manicured hand a moment before taking it her own giving it a shake and a squeeze.

"Your exploits on Terra Nova and your induction into the Spectres have made for quite the briefing in the diplomatic corps," Clerk Bosker told her, immediately massaging his hand after she released him. It was the only indication that she might have been a little forceful in her grip.

Shepard's copper eyes cut to the other man. "And you are?"

"My name is Samesh Bhatia," he said, giving a respectful nod, "It is an honor to meet you, Commander." He glared at Bosker. "My wife was a marine. The Alliance is keeping my wife's body from me. She deserves a proper burial!"

Ash started at that.

"I told you, Mr. Bhatia, it's out of my—"

"Hold it," the Commander spoke up. "Why would the Alliance keep a body?"

The Clerk sighed. "Private Bhatia served and died on Eden Prime. Her body received wounds that are inconsistent with anything we have ever seen."

"Eden Prime?" the Chief echoed and looked at the other man. "Your wife was Private Nirali Bhatia?" The stately man nodded. "I'm Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. I served in her unit."

Samesh smiled kindly at Ash. "Chief Williams, it is a pleasure. Nirali spoke of you with great respect." He sounded genuinely happy to see her.

It sounded so hollow, but she said it anyway. "I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Bhatia." She swallowed. If she could have done anything to save the woman, she would have. Now she realized what Bosker meant by her wounds. The husk of Nirali had been one of the first creatures that had charged them when they reached the research camp; Kaidan had been the one to take her out with seven rapid shots to the chest with his Kessler. Ash had frozen. She shut her eyes against the memory, compartmentalizing. _Deal with it later_. "Nirali was a good woman," she told him quietly. "What can we do for you?"

Samesh's eyes tightened. "I've requested that my wife's body be returned to me for cremation, but the military has refused my request."

"Why did the military refuse your request?" the Commander asked her eyes cutting to those of Clerk Bosker. "There's got to be some reason."

"I don't know." Samesh glared again at the clerk. "They have declared it impossible for my wife to be returned to me!" He looked ready to punch Bosker. Ash wanted to step back and let the man.

"Is the body dangerous or contaminated?" Shepard asked suddenly. Ash's eyes cut to her commander. _No, please, God, no…_ Surely the Commander wouldn't side with the Alliance with this one. Marines took care of their own.

"No, no," Bosker assured them, and Shepard relaxed, "Nothing like that. But, you have to understand that the circumstances surrounding the decision are classified."

Shepard nodded as she thought of what to do, her thoughts unwillingly returning to Mindoir and the bureaucratic assholes who had kept her parents' bodies for their studies, citing "on-going investigation" as their excuse. It had taken four years to get her parents back for burial, and that was after Anderson had pulled strings for her. "Williams, buy Mr. Bhatia a drink and take him back to our table. Mr. Bosker and I are going to chat."

"The Commander will set this right," Williams assured the grieving widower as they walked off.

Shepard's neutral face morphed into a scowl once the others were out of earshot. Mr. Bosker rubbed the back of his neck. "Mr. Bhatia is good man in an understandably frustrating position. I wish that I could help him," he admitted.

"It would help if I had a little more information to go on," Shepard replied and he sighed and nodded.

"Like I told you, Private Bhatia's wounds are inconsistent with any type of weapons damage we've seen before," he explained. "That is why her body is being held. She is not dangerous. Her body is, in fact, extremely valuable to the Alliance. The tests we're conducting may lead to better defenses against geth attacks. Respectfully, Private Bhatia may save more lives in death than she did in life."

 _Better defenses._ Shepard was torn. How many had died because they were unprepared for the geth? It didn't make it right, but— She ran a hand through her hair as she thought of Jenkins and the few colonists she and her team had run into groundside on Eden Prime. _God._ Casualties on Eden Prime had been high: the highest civilian and marine combined casualty rate since Shanxi. And they got new figures and counts daily. They were at some forty thousand in civilian casualties now and rising. Most of the Snake Eye marine battalion had been wiped out. The two-one-two, the two-one-three and the two-one-nine detachments only had few members left and had been integrated into the other units of the Snake Eye.

 _Smoke and death_ , Kaidan had commented. Shepard's odd-colored eyes reflected the orange hue of the waning artificial sunset as they travelled across the room to the subject of her thoughts who was slumped over in his chair. Mr. Bhatia was chatting with Williams and Joker.

On the other hand, holding bodies was wrong. Mr. Bhatia was clearly hurting, and she remembered the frustration and pain she had gone through with her parents' bodies—though she knew that the material used in the ablative coating on most hard suits made for military use was the direct results of the study. If she hadn't been serving under Captain—then Commander—Anderson, she was sure it would have taken longer. Where was the humanity in humanity? Feros had proven that humans cared little for one another. She supposed she'd be out of job if everyone loved each other though.

And though Commander Shepard had never met the woman, Private Bhatia had been a marine. Marines took care of their own. It was something that was done. You never left anyone behind. You never let them take their lumps alone. If one fucked up, the whole unit paid for it.

So it came down to did she pull strings and bring the body home, or did she just walk away and let them keep other Marines from suffering the same fate? _Catch 22, Calleigh._

"You've got to have a lot of bodies," she said as she ran the figures through her hair again and remembered how many husks there were at the space port alone. "Can't you release one?"

Bosker's answer was frustrating. "Very few bodies have this new type of weapons damage. And very few were in good enough condition to study. Beyond that, Commander, we need as many bodies as we can to get a reasonable sample size."

She nodded and blew out a breath. "How long do you think the research is going to take?"

"This is a long-term study. I wouldn't expect the bodies to be released for a year or longer."

Shepard liked that answer even less. Telling Samesh that his wife wouldn't be released for more than a year… "When will this research result in actual new technology?"

Bosker looked uncomfortable. "If we're lucky," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "we'll realize usable technology from this study in a few years."

_Years._

Shepard took a breath and made up her mind.


	23. Gravity Works

The _Normandy_ 's bridge was… crowded, Kaidan thought as he made his way down the gangway towards his station to relieve 1st Lieutenant Aiken for Dog Watch. Wrex leaned against the bulkhead like a reptilian wart on the wall and Kaidan had to edge around him. The krogan grunted at him, but otherwise remained still and quiet.

Williams nodded to Kaidan from her post at the gunnery station; Kaidan gave a nod back before turning his attention to the crowd on the bridge.

Garrus stood tall beside the Commander, his mandibles clacking in an unfamiliar beat. Kaidan wondered if Garrus knew he was doing it, or if it was just a nervous habit, like the nail biting he had noticed Williams do every once in a while.

Tali sat at the console to Joker's left, her omni-tool lit. The amber hue reflected against her breather mask casting an eerie glow. Kaidan had a feeling she was mapping systems that were of value to her people, and he wondered what it would be like not have natural resources. One mistake had cost her people their home.

"It's just an ice giant, Commander," Pressly was saying from the navigation station as Kaidan got Aiken's attention. "No Prothean ruins. Heavy xenon deposits though. AGeS might be interested."

Aiken smiled a grateful smile and the short balding Lieutenant stood up to leave the bridge as Kaidan wedged himself between the wall, Garrus and Commander Shepard in order to sit down at the station. He looked at the read out. Fargeluse. His dark eyes took in the view out the porthole. The planet's thick atmosphere was rich with hydrocarbons. The swirls mesmerized him but the orange-brown color reminded him of Edolus's landscape. The direction his mind took from there was not a pleasant one as he remembered the mnemonic Hardy had used on the thresher maw.

_Rahna._

The name came unbidden to his mind. Rahna had always gotten nosebleeds from trying to do that mnemonic, but had ultimately succeeded. Kaidan had had to use a different stance in order to get the effect right and even then he could only freeze small objects and for less than ten seconds—he had never been able to master the biotic ability to completely place an object within a stasis cocoon of dark energy. It had been a major contention between Vyrnuus and Kaidan. Vyrnuus always accused Kaidan of being a slacker.

He shook off the thoughts quickly. There was no changing the past, and there was no sense dwelling on it. Instead he focused on being impressed that Hardy could freeze such a large creature. He looked around the bridge in an effort to stop the images of the past from scrolling across his mind's eye.

Shepard had yet to say anything, but met Kaidan's eyes. It bothered him that the Commander's normally bright eyes seemed dull, listless. He blamed the Cipher. She had been looking worse for wear since Feros. It didn't help that they had had the inspection from Hell, and that Shepard had had to face Kahoku alone. Kaidan had pretty much been out of action for nearly twenty-four hours because of those damn meds.

The Lieutenant wondered what was going on inside her head and had wanted to ask her, but had yet to do anything. Since they had gotten back on board she had been avoiding him. This he couldn't blame on the Cipher. After the fight in the Wards, everything was a blur. He didn't even remember getting to Hawksmoor. According to Williams, he had been at the Embassy Lounge and passed out before consuming any alcohol.

Kaidan swallowed the sudden fear that rose up in his throat. He hadn't been in control of his facilities. What if he had inadvertently injured somebody? He felt sick. What if he had and no one told him about it?

"Send a report," Shepard ordered Pressly, drawing her attention away from Kaidan. "Anything else?"

Pressly shook his head from his station. "Nothing within range. Patavig's next, but it's nothing but seas of ammonia. The exit relay is in a highly eccentric orbit around the planet."

"The negotiations between the Hierarchy and the Alliance are going well," Garrus offered interrupting the beat he had been tapping out. It was a nice reprieve before he began again. Kaidan wondered about the beat, if it was a cultural song or one of the other cultures'. It wasn't anything he recognized offhand.

"As far as I'm concerned the volus can have it," Pressly said then nodded to the Commander's unasked question. "We can be within range of Porolan in twenty-seven minutes for a long range scan, forty-two for a short-range. Sharjila is the first planet in orbit around Macedon." The last sentence seemed to be an added thought tacked on to the end.

"I don't think I'm going to like what we find on Sharjila," the Commander remarked, her voice drawn and tight. "Something's not right about this Nassana Dantius." She shook her head. "Politicians rub me the wrong way, I guess."

Pressly snorted. "Politicians rub everyone the wrong way, Commander."

"I hear that," Williams added.

Kaidan found himself enjoying the musical notes of Shepard and Williams' chuckles as he ran systems checks, grateful for the distraction even as he wondered who the Commander and Pressly were talking about.

"Change the heading to Sharjila," Shepard said, crossing her arms across her chest. "I may have a bad feeling, but if there's really a hostage, I don't know if I could live knowing I got her killed. While we're on the surface, scan planets. Maybe we'll get lucky and Benezia's daughter will be on one of them. Keep the channels open in case something goes wrong. We may need a speedy pick up." She looked at the aliens on the bridge, the corners of her mouth tilting upwards. "Tali, Garrus, Wrex, gear up. Level 1 Pressure Hazard. Meet me in the cargo hold in fifteen."

"Humans aren't very good at handling that much pressure, Shepard," Wrex remarked. He made no move to leave the bridge, his red eyes studying the Commander.

"Devlon, Wrex," was all Shepard replied as she left the bridge. "Devlon."

Wrex only snorted before stomping off after her. The bridge was suddenly bereft of so many bodies. The temperature cooled almost immediately.

"Glad to see you're among the living again, Alenko," Joker remarked idly after Pressly had left the bridge nav for CIC. He looked over at Kaidan with a knowing grin. Kaidan decided he didn't want to know.

"Somebody's gotta keep you out of trouble," he responded with an impersonal nod as he searched the comms for enemy chatter before moving mechanically on to his next task.

"I'm the epitome of 'non-trouble'," Joker stated.

Kaidan sent a look to his friend that conveyed what he felt about that statement. "And I'm the tooth fairy," he added, just in case his incredulous expression was anything but clear.

The pilot cracked a wicked smile in return, and Kaidan immediately regretted saying anything. "Been wondering about that tutu in your locker." Leave it to Joker to one-up him—again.

"Just for special occasions," he said with a shrug and a small grin.

"Yeah, that image?" Williams spoke up. She through her hands up in disgust. "Did not want." Kaidan chuckled. Yeah, that was not something he wanted in his head either. He mentally shuddered.

"Aw, now, Doll," Joker drawled, leaning back in his seat, "if we're really good, Alenko might reenact the _Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy_."

"Please don't," the Chief protested.

"I second that motion," Pressly added firmly over the comm.

"All in favor?" Joker asked.

"Nay," the bridge and CIC crews rumbled. Kaidan was laughing so hard tears were forming. Joker looked less than pleased.

* * *

Three hours later, Ash was regretting voting against watching Alenko prance around in a tutu. Anything was better than just sitting there on her ass scanning planets for Prothean ruins while the Commander and the aliens went through hostage negotiations on Sharjila. Though that didn't sound fun either. But still! It had to be better than _this_!

"Well, this is exciting," she remarked drily. She stared out the porthole at the swirling of the thick atmosphere of Porolan. It was a massive terrestrial world. Not as big as Amateratsu, but pretty damn close. The gray clouds were tinted a greenish-yellow. She wondered if the atmosphere was breathable.

Joker looked over his shoulder at the Gunnery Chief, an eyebrow raised, a grin splitting his face. "Isn't it?"

Ash rolled her eyes and made a face at the man when he turned back to his control panel.

"Your face is gonna get stuck that way," he said casually.

Alenko laughed. Ash was mortified. She spluttered incoherently. Joker cast a knowing glance at her as he leaned back in the chair again, waiting for her next move. She could only sit there and scowl before getting exasperated enough to turn attention back to her duties.

"What did I miss?" Hendricks greeted as she took her station to Joker's left. Ash glared daggers at the back of Joker's head.

"Utter boredom, Beautiful," Joker drawled, looking up at the new arrival, quite openly studying her. The Chief didn't know what surprised her more: the fact that he was admitting to being bored or the fact that he called Hendricks 'beautiful' and was oggling the female Lieutenant. So she was a doll and Hendricks was beautiful? That… that prick. She blinked. Wait. Where the hell did that come from?

Hendricks rolled her eyes. "Keep it up, Moreau, and I'll break your legs."

Joker only blew his copilot a kiss. Ash glared holes into her duty station. He didn't do that with her.

God. Why did it bother her so much? The man was a pain in the ass! _It shouldn't. It doesn't._

"Well, you're certainly in rare form today," Hendricks observed as she looked down at her station, a frown furrowing her brow. "Strange signal from the other side of the planet, sir."

The bridge crew went on alert. CIC was immediately at their stations.

"Define 'strange signal'." Joker's voice was no longer flirtatious; his fingers flitted across the keys to get the bearings.

"'Not normal,'" Hendricks responded, coyly. "Tracking." She shook her head. "Con, anything?"

"It's an old beacon of some sort," Pressly's voice sounded over the comm. "Asari dialect." He was quiet a tense moment before speaking again. "Joker, change heading, oh-niner-seven. Run intercept."

Joker crossed his arms. "Great." His green eyes cut to Kaidan's as he obeyed his orders. "Any life signs?" He cracked his knuckles before laying in the new course heading.

"Negative."

"Well, that's better than—" Whatever was emitting the signal was suddenly bouncing off the shields. Joker scowled. "Hey, watch the paint!"

Hendricks, used to his antics, gave a sigh. "The shields didn't even flux, sir."

"Yeah, well, it's the principal of the matter, Hendricks," he grumbled. "Pressly, what the hell was that?"

"The beacon," their XO told them. He sounded somewhere in between exasperated and trying to keep from laughing. "Hardy, Fredericks, Guo: gear up for a space walk. Williams?"

"Yes, sir," Ash jumped up from her seat. "Please tell me, I'm going, sir."

"Gear up with the others. Ten minutes."

Ash all but ran off the bridge.

* * *

Twenty-five minutes later, after the _Normandy_ had been tethered to the strangely-shaped beacon, Ash swore loudly though not as creatively as she could have when her own tether dislodged, and she was suddenly falling towards Porolan's atmosphere at terminal velocity. She wanted excitement, but she didn't want to burn up in the atmosphere of the damn planet. She gave a frustrated scream that sounded startling… girly.


	24. The Rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _ **Atmospheric Popcorn Inspiration:**_ _Ash's comments are heavily inspired by Alpha Cucumber's review on fanfiction.net… ;) (Speaking of: Her AU KotOR story, For the Right Reason, is awesome and highly recommended. I'm not the only one who believes this, but I thought I would give a shout out since I used her quote.)_
> 
>  
> 
> _Implied liberties with biotics._
> 
>  
> 
> _Everyone's gonna hate me after this chapter…_

When Williams' shriek cut across the comm., Kaidan's heart jumped to his throat, and it took him a moment before he thought to access Williams' suit to monitor her.

"Ash?" he asked just as Joker questioned, "What the hell happened?"

"The tether." Williams' voice was eerily calm. "It's not—I'm not on the beacon."

… _The hell?_ "Where are you?" Kaidan wanted to know. The readout was wrong. Had to be. She was several meters off the mark—and moving _away_ —and her pulse and blood pressure had spiked. Wrong.

"Uh, falling."

_Holy Hell._

Joker sat up in his chair, his hands flying across the controls as he too called up her suit. "Falling?" Disbelief laced his tone.

"My tether snapped," she told them quietly. Then she wailed. "I'm gonna be atmospheric popcorn!"

Kaidan blinked disbelievingly. Joker stared at the panel before glancing back at the Lieutenant. Hendricks looked as bewildered as both men felt.

"Delta Sierra," Kaidan muttered. This was not happening, he thought. This was a dream, and he would wake up. _Now._ He stood from his post, his hand near his ear as he tapped into the ship's comm. "Hardy, how controlled are your biotics?" He rushed down the gangway. "Can you do a biotic pull or lift?"

The corporal's response was less than satisfactory. "Negative, Lieutenant. I can only push her further into the atmosphere, sir. I can freeze her, but that won't pull her out again. My suit doesn't have enough juice to get to her."

"My suit does," Guo's voice spoke up, "I could-"

"Belay that," Hardy cut him off, "you won't have enough fuel to get both of you back. She's falling faster than she looks. Check your HUD."

"Lieutenant, can you get her, sir?" Fredericks' voice sounded distant. "You're an L2, right? You can get her, right? Right, sir?"

"I'm gearing up now." Kaidan tossed a questioning glance at Pressly. The XO looked dumbfounded and only nodded. Kaidan crossed the CIC quickly. "Chief?" He tapped into Ash's personal comm. from his personal comm. She was praying. Out of reflex—and his mother dragging him to Mass every chance she got—he murmured _amen_ when Ash did.

"Yeah?"

"I'm coming."

She was quiet a beat. "Marines stick together."

"To the end, Ash."

Rushing down the ladderwell, taking two stairs at a time, Kaidan swore under his breath. How the hell was he supposed to pull Ash out of the atmosphere? He hadn't practiced a pull mnemonic in years. _Fifteen_ years actually. Heh. Maybe Vyrnuus had been right about the slacker thing.

_Focus, Alenko._

Did he even remember? As the elevator took him to the engineering deck he wondered: Did he even _want_ to remember?

Fifteen years.

 _Lift._ Rahna's voice came unbidden to the forefront of his thoughts. _Focus. Just like… like_ he _showed us. Left arm down. Right hand out. Now cross over… and pull._

It was a long time. Time enough to forget. Time enough to move on. Time enough to learn from his mistakes and make some rules.

There were five basic rules Kaidan lived by.

Rule 1: _Follow orders. Questions get people injured or worse._

Rule 2: _Look before you leap. Not looking could get you or someone else killed._

Rule 3: _Look before you let others leap. They might get you injured, maimed or killed._

Rule 4: _Make sure there's a plan A, B, C, and a way out. Good planning keeps everyone safe._

Rule 5: _Never eat turnips. If ordered, implement Rule 4 by disregarding Rule 1._

He sighed and a wry grin formed on his lips even as the lift door opened, and he bolted across the cargo bay to his locker. Ash needed a lesson or two about rules.

* * *

There were four basic rules Shepard lived by.

First Rule: _Follow the rules. Rules are there for a reason._

Second Rule: _Don't give anyone a reason to break the rules. Give others orders they can follow._

Third Rule: _Don't meddle in politics. Politicians are career killers._

Fourth Rule: _When in doubt, improvise or blow it up. Apply the latter if it looks hungry or has a grenade launcher._

And here she was: in the Traverse, in a prefab full of mercs, breaking Third Rule, which meant she was breaking First Rule. Which meant she needed to revise her rules. She really needed to set her priorities. _'Don't meddle in politics' should be First Rule._

_Focus, Calleigh._

_Hostage._

She popped a new heat sink into her shotgun and motioned for Wrex to get into position. Garrus had already taken cover on top of a stack of crates, his long, lean form stretched out, his eye to the scope of his sniper rifle. At her signal, a single inferno round would hit the fuel tank on the second story of the prefab.

Wrex crouched low and eased forward as quietly as his bulky frame would allow. He nodded to her when he was in position.

Shepard's eyes gazed briefly at the quarian beside her. Both nodded at the same time.

_Ready._

"Squawk Four," Shepard whispered.

All Hell broke loose at the crack of Garrus' rifle.

* * *

She glared angrily at the end of the tether that was trailing behind her. She secured it! How the hell-? Ash took a breath and released it.

Since Eden Prime, the Gunnery Chief's rules were mutable things that had constantly changed as the situation dictated. Currently, there were three.

Rule Number 1: _Keep the Faith. God is out there._

Rule Number 2: _Follow the rules. Promotions only come to those who follow them._

Rule Number 3: _Die valiantly. It's the only way to clear Granddad._

Up until she had confronted Shepard on Wrex and Vakarian, there had been a fourth: _Systems Alliance is Mother and Father. Protect it at all costs. No aliens allowed._ But Shepard was right. Saren and the geth going after a weapon—or whatever—that had the potential to wipe out all organic life? Priority.

Ash took another breath, watching as the flat hunk of metal that was the strange beacon got smaller. It was only a matter of time before… before…

This wasn't how she pictured dying. Stuck in the gravity well of planet. Falling to her death. Being completely helpless. She'd burned most of her fuel in the rocket pack strapped to her back before she realized that the gravity was too great to establish an escape velocity with a itty-bitty jet pack. She was but a speck of sand in the atmosphere of this monster.

Porolan had a dense atmosphere. Even if she made it through the initial burning—which she doubted even with the ablative coating on her armor—there was a high risk of getting caught in the high winds and her body getting ripped apart. Idly, she wondered if it were physically possible. She was just scared enough to believe it.

"Ash?" Alenko's voice questioned at the same time as Joker's thickly worded: "What the hell happened?"

"The tether. It's not—" Ash felt like crying. How could she have been so stupid? "I'm not on the beacon."

"Where are you?" Kaidan's voice was hard. That was his here-let-me-kill-that-for-you-I-am-a-big-bad-biotic tone of voice. It was the tone of voice he used when he knew that Something Is Wrong and We Must Kill It. He used that tone out in the field and had for nearly two weeks after Eden Prime; up until Shepard was transferred as the CO of the _Normandy_. She knew that he had taken Jenkins death harder than he let on. Captain Anderson had even told her so when he had personally debriefed her—with strict orders not to let on that she knew.

She swallowed and twisted around to look at the planet below. "Uh." She felt sick as she watched the swirling clouds. At this range, the air currents swirled the dark atmosphere around, and they looked faster than anything she had ever seen. "Falling." _Towards oblivion. Towards death._

"Falling?" Joker demanded, his voice incredulous and a little higher than normal. It was just enough to send her into a panic. _I'm gonna die._

"My tether snapped." Tears prickled her eyes, and she maneuvered herself where she could see the _Normandy_ and the others safely tethered to the beacon again. Her voice cracked. "I'm gonna be atmospheric popcorn!"

"Sonovabitch," Pressly's voice quietly murmured in her ear. _Not helping._

Her comm. lit up as the others discussed how to get her out of the gravity well. Meanwhile, Ash did the only thing she could think of: She prayed.

"God," she whispered, "I haven't prayed in a while. Not since Eden Prime anyway." She collected her thoughts, thinking of the husk of Bhatia. Given the choice, what was the better way to die? Burning up and/or getting ripped apart in the atmosphere of a large gas giant, or skewered on a metal spike and drained of everything she ever was and turned into an unthinking killing machine? "If this is how I'm supposed to go… " She stopped, rolled her eyes at herself. Could she get any more pathetic? Her thoughts went to her mother, her sisters. "Take care of them. Especially Mom and Sar. Joker needs a little help too. Not too much though. He's an ass."

"Chief?" Alenko's voice cut across the comm, startling her, but she didn't stop. This was her only chance to pray before she died. She wasn't going to squander it.

"God, give me the strength to see this to the end, and not fear death." She sighed. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve with a great crew. Watch over them. Help them stop Saren and his geth troops. Give Shepard the strength to see this mission to the end. Amen." She grinned a little when Alenko echoed her. As respectful as he was about others beliefs and cultures, she'd bet her new sniper rifle it was out of reflex. He didn't seem the type to pray. "Yeah?" she answered him.

"I'm coming," he told her, his tone resolute. _I-am-a-big-bad-biotic. Retriever of marines who can't get to escape velocity. Fetcher of coffee. Ass-kicker of Thresher Maws._

 _I know,_ she wanted to say. "Marines stick together," she said instead.

"To the end, Ash," he swore.

He-Man without the fuzzy underwear, page-boy haircut, and big damn sword.

Yep. She was going to kiss him if he got her out of this one. She should have kissed James when she had the chance. Maybe she would the next time she saw him.

And Ash made new rules for her life.

Rule Number 1: _Keep the Faith. God's all around._

Rule Number 2: _Fuck the rules. You only live once_.

Rule Number 3: _Look before leaping. You wouldn't have gotten yourself in this mess if you had, dumb ass._

If she got out of this, she was going to do her damnedest to live as long as she could. She'd survived against the odds on Eden Prime. She could have faith in Alenko to get her out of this.

* * *

Shepard glared at the dead asari at her feet and shot the body again. Fucking politics.

"Shepard to _Normandy_ ," she called over the comm. The damn diplomat lied. _Lied._ This changed all the rules. "Joker. Lock onto my signal, and get us out of here."

_No more politics. None._

"Aye, aye, ma'am. ETA twelve minutes. We've got a present for you."

Shepard perked up. "You found Dr. T'soni?"

"Uh," Joker hesitated, and Shepard frowned. "No, ma'am. But it's asari-made." As an afterthought he added, "Asari are hot."

Shepard snorted. "Just get your ass over here."

"Yes, ma'am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I hope that Ash was in character this chapter. I don't see her as a fanatical, devout character. It makes sense to me that she waited until "Hi, I'm Death. Let's have dinner and make babies together" to pray._
> 
>  
> 
> _**Delta Sierra:** Refers to a stupid mistake; originally DS (as in Dumb Shit)_


	25. Vunerabilities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Thank you everyone who has read, reviewed and is following!** You guys are wonderful._
> 
> _This chapter was supposed to be Therum and have lots of Shenko moments, but it didn't work. I've rewritten it several times. Guess Liara is just going to have to wait. Oh, well. Plenty of time. ;) The next few chapters will feature liberties taken with UNC: Geth Incursions._

Kaidan honestly thought Williams was only going to hug him. She was ecstatic to be alive and a little breathless about it. A hug he could have dealt with. She'd almost died. And he'd had to pull a stunt that he'd never really mastered to begin with.

The sound of Williams' fearful scream and the image of her limp body slamming into the _Normandy_ 's hull still irritated the back of his mind. That her armor had protected her from any major broken bones was a miracle. And if the _Normandy_ hadn't been in just the right place…

But she didn't hug him there in the airlock as D-Con hissed around them, stung the exposed flesh on their faces.

"Please, please, don't write me up." Williams' hands, one of which held her helmet, wound around his neck. She looked up at him, uncertain a moment, her expression bleak. Then she leaned in, up on her toes to reach him, planting her mouth on his, surprising the hell out of him.

Her lips were warm, dry and… inviting. He tensed even as he groaned, his hands going to her waist to push her away as she deepened the kiss. This wasn't right. This was _Ash_. But he'd be lying to himself if a small part of him didn't love it.

But sanity took hold just before his baser, male instinct to kiss her back kicked in, and Kaidan moved away. This was _Ash_. _Think, damn it._

They were both breathing heavy. Not good.

His body was reacting. Definitely not good.

Her face was flushed, and he was sure his was too. He summoned his best frown as he repeated _regs, regs, regs, not interested, Shepard, turnips, regs_ in his mind over and over again.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, looking away, her lower lip quivering. "I—" She pushed back a wayward strand of dark hair and paced away from him, hugging herself, the helmet in her hand creaking against the pressure of her grip.

Stroking his chin, he regarded her carefully, foregoing all effort to frown at her. Kaidan evaluated her as professionally as he could, forcing his control. Ash was shaking, her breathing shallow. The pupils of her dark brown eyes were dilated and haunted. The flush was subsiding. She would glance away whenever he tried to meet her eyes. They'd almost lost her. _He_ had almost lost her.

It was difficult to concentrate. He'd had to force his nervous system to respond to commands he hadn't done in years. And he knew he would pay for it later. He was mentally and physically exhausted because of it. A dull ache behind his eyes had already begun.

"Adrenaline makes you do strange things, Chief," he told her, well aware of the fact that her first combat experience had been Eden Prime and then there had been those few fights on the Citadel and Feros. God. _Feros._ "You're going to see Dr. Chakwas. I think you're going into shock."

She gave a laugh that held no mirth. "Because I kissed a superior officer?" she asked. The Chief looked at him worriedly. "Oh, God, you really are going to write me up, aren't you?" She chewed her lip. Despite all pretenses otherwise, his eyes zeroed in on her mouth, to those lips that had just pressed up against his hungrily.

"I should, you know," he asserted after a moment, determined not to get in a twist over a kiss that meant nothing. At least he had a way out. Williams closed her eyes. "Hand over your gear to Intel and report to the infirmary."

Ash paled. "But—Aye, aye, sir."

The silence that followed was more awkward than the kiss.

The door cycled open and as Kaidan and the Chief stepped onto the deck, Joker's voice echoed off the walls. "Sock's in my locker if you need it, Alenko."

_Not helping the awkwardness, Moreau._

Kaidan glared at the helmsman. The look Joker threw Kaidan's way confused the biotic. The Chief and… Joker? _Nah._ He had credits on Joker and Hendricks. They argued too much like an old married couple to _not_ have anything going on. And according to the paperwork, Joker had specifically requested the woman to play his second.

"Just don't stick it in my bed," Williams grumbled walking on shaky legs towards the bowels of the ship. "Sir."

"Hey, it's my bed, too," Joker argued. Though his voice was light, he was watching the Chief worriedly.

Thankfully, _thankfully_ , the Commander's voice broke into the comm. before the conversation got any more surreal. "Shepard to _Normandy_."

Kaidan didn't pay attention to the conversation that followed, nor did he walk to the same ladderwell with Williams. He regretted it when she all but fell into his arms on the crew deck.

"She's swooning for you, Kaidan," Joker's voice said in his ear. The Lieutenant only sighed and carried his fellow marine to the infirmary just as he had Shepard when they returned aboard from Eden Prime.

* * *

Shepard thought that Alenko had looked like death warmed over. When she'd been briefed on the situation with the asari beacon, she felt damned proud to have him on her crew. She did wonder about Pressly's decision of allowing Williams to accompany the salvage crew on a Walk. The Chief may have been ZeeGee certified, but that didn't mean she was _qualified_. Shepard didn't blame her though. Intel still had to get back with her on the malfunction-Shepard suspected a faulty clasp on the tether, but Shepard had been with Ashley long enough to know how responsible the younger woman was. And it wasn't like it had been Ashley's fault that she had only been posted groundside.

Or maybe it was. Her scores were too good for only crap postings. Shepard would get it out of the Chief yet.

Shepard had only been back on board the _Normandy_ for thirty minutes. Long enough to fill out a mission report, shower, and get a Sitrep from Alenko with regards to Ashley's current stay in the infirmary. The Chief was suffering from a mild concussion and a broken rib. Shepard's immediate orders hadn't sat well with the Chief, but orders were orders and Ashley had complied.

"Commander, mission reports are away," Joker reported, startling Shepard out of her reverie. She had just settled into her chair at her private terminal with a mug of hot coffee. She blinked and opened her mouth to thank the helmsman.

"Message coming in from the Brass at Arcturus," Joker told her before she had a chance to speak, "coded for your eyes only, Commander. Patching it through."

Brass at Arcturus? FleetCOM? Shepard straightened her shirt and sat at attention. Taking a breath to calm her nerves, she flipped the switch on her personal terminal. The screen shimmered to life, the image of an aging man in admiral's dress appeared. The connection was fuzzy.

" _Normandy_ ," he greeted, his tone holding the edge of authority. "Admiral Hackett here."

"Admiral," she responded, her mouth going dry, saluting the image. What was the Commander of Fifth Fleet contacting her for? "Lieutenant Commander Shepard of the _Normandy_. How can I help you, sir?"

"We were waiting for your latest mission reports in order to pinpoint your location," he explained doing little to actually explain anything. "Good work on Feros, Commander."

The Brass didn't just contact anyone for the hell of it, Spectre or not. She wondered what was going on. She only nodded and waited for an explanation.

"We're getting a marked increase of geth activity in the Skyllian Verge," the Admiral continued. Shepard sucked in a breath. _Not another human colony._ Hackett's visage looked tense. "Combined with the data you relayed in your mission report from Feros, we sent out surveillance drones."

The Commander leaned forward, her face a tableau of worry. "What did you find out, Admiral?"

He was silent a long moment and Shepard held her breath. "They've set up outposts on four different planets in the Armstrong Cluster," he told her.

 _Shit._ That was well outside the Veil and too damn close to Elysium for her comfort.

"Do we have any idea what they're after?"

"It's hard to say," Hackett said. "They could be just gathering Intel on us. Or maybe they're setting up staging grounds for hit and run attacks on human colonies. A geth hit and run on Elysium would be a devastating blow to colonist morale. Especially in light of the Blitz. Lieutenant Guthmiller's defense of Elysium and the timely arrival of the Agincourt was the only thing that kept the Elysium colonists from panicking.

We sent a team of Ns to the Hong system to investigate the possibilities of invasion and gather more intelligence. We lost contact with the team two days ago. As a result, we're under executive order to initialize Operation: Aggressive Stance."

"Aggressive Stance?" Shepard's posture was rigid.

"We're launching a counter offensive to take out those outposts."

She nodded. "War?"

"Not officially. We're trying to keep this as quiet as possible. Parliament doesn't want this to escalate into something it's not. We have no idea what the enemy is capable of."

"With respect, why have you contacted me, Admiral?"

Hackett was silent a moment, studying her. "We need a ship with stealth capabilities to infiltrate the systems and gather more Intel before we send any more teams in," he said at length. "The _Normandy_ 's all we've got."

"You're… taking my ship, sir?"

The Admiral plowed ahead without stopping to answer her question. "The data gathered suggests four outposts. Our infiltration team, lead by Lieutenant Commander Guthmiller, hasn't reported back in. We have no way of knowing how big this incursion is. Or if there are more than four outposts. The drones stopped transmitting data right around the time the team dropped off the ladar."

Guthmiller. The motherfucking Hero of the Blitz. Shepard closed her eyes. _God._

"The geth wouldn't hesitate to wipe out the team if the team was spotted," she said quietly.

The Admiral nodded. "We need someone to investigate this, Shepard. Stopping Saren is still your top priority, but you've got experience fighting the geth. You're the logical choice to take these outposts out."

"Sir?"

"We need the best for this operation, Shepard. I need you. I need the _Normandy_. You're it."

"I'm—" Shepard was momentarily taken aback. "Yes, sir."

"Rendezvous with the _SSV Azukizaka_ in the Attican Beta Cluster. We're transmitting the rendezvous coordinates and all the locations of known geth outposts in the Armstrong Cluster to the _Normandy_ now."

"Who am I reporting to, sir?"

"They're reporting to you, Commander."

"Sir?"

"You're a Spectre, Shepard, but you're still human. We need you. This Op is yours. You'll have two teams at your disposal."

Shepard nodded. Felt a little queasy. The same feeling she had gotten when Nihlus had told her that he had put her name forward as a candidate.

"If push comes to shove, I want my people heading fire teams regardless of rank," she said, "or species."

"That's pushing it, Commander."

"I need people I can depend on, Admiral," Shepard argued, her mind already running tactics and strategy based on Garrus and Alenko's leadership skills. "They wouldn't be on my crew roster if I couldn't depend on them."

"I'll have to clear it with the Chiefs," Hackett told her, "but I should have an answer by the time you get to the rendezvous point. I may have to push your Spectre status up their collective noses."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't screw this up, Shepard. Hackett out."

The terminal screen went blank and Shepard sat back. The Sole Survivor strikes once again, she thought grimly. She was the only one they could lay blame on, after all.

"Commander," Joker's voice broke into her thoughts, "we've just received an encrypted data packet from FleetCOM."

"Decrypt and have Pressly lay in a course for the coordinates in the Attican Beta Cluster."

"Aw, weren't we just there?" he complained. Shepard huffed at him. "Course set. Vectors are green, Commander. Fuel reserves at thirty percent; heat load at sixty-seven percent. We'll have to stop to refuel and discharge before we can leave the system."

"Noted. Coordinate refuel and discharge with Pressly and Adams," Shepard told him. "Route the rest of the data to my terminal and tell Pressly to gather the Senior Officers and Tali for a mission brief in two hours. Find Lieutenant Alenko and send him to my office to go over scenarios. And let me know when we get to Attican Beta."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

"Is Ashley feeling better?"

"You'll have to ask Dr. Chakwas, ma'am. I haven't seen her since she got back on board."

"How're you holding up?"

"I—" he hesitated. "I'm good, Commander. Thanks… for asking." He was quiet a moment more before saying, "Alenko's on his way, ma'am."

* * *

"Asari poetry?" Ash demanded from her position on the bed in the infirmary. Joker only shrugged, wincing as Dr. Chakwas attached another electrode patch to his leg. "I nearly got killed over asari poetry?"

She was already pissed that she had been reduced to temporary administrative work. That she had been through nearly dying to examine a beacon that had alien poetry was… was…

"There were some paintings too," Gun Dog added, oh so unhelpfully. He shrugged, helping himself to the medi-gel dispenser. Ash wanted to hurt something. The dispenser made a beeping sound. "Hey, Dr. Chakwas, it won't let me have anymore candy."

Chakwas chuckled. "You've been cut off, Charles. No more candy for you."

"Huh? Why?"

The doctor sighed and leveled him with a look.

"I didn't think Hardy would do it, honest!"

She rolled her eyes and asked incredulously, "You didn't think that Corporal Hardy would toss you into the air when you said, 'Hey, Corporal, how far can you throw me?'"

Ash shared a look with Joker, her mood improving somewhat. They would both have fun with this one.


	26. Sting Like a Scorpion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I'm really unsure about the new characters I'm introducing for the geth incursions. If I've made them too MarySue-ish, please do not hesitate to voice your opinion! Mary Sues are the devil and must be neutralized._
> 
> _Ranting aside, thank you, everyone, who has added this thing to their alerts and/or faved. I have no idea what you see in this thing, but it makes my day. :3_
> 
> _**Other than that:**_ _I humbly beg the suspension of disbelief._

Shepard fought hard to keep the shaking from showing in her hands. Swallowing the lump in her throat she pressed both hands over her eyes as if they burned with weariness. Now was not the time to feel empty and drained. Not with a rogue Spectre on the run, the geth in the Skyllian Verge, and an Op with very little Intel to execute.

_No pressure._

Gerald Guthmiller was probably dead. The thought did not sit well with her. He was the best damn Infiltrator she had ever met. Long days at the range and discussing the intricacies of hacking a terminal came back to her unbidden. He had once told her she hacked like a girl. She'd kneed him in the crotch for it. Two weeks later they were spending all their free time having sex together. Damn, but the man could curl her toes.

The memories brought a wry, twisted smile to her face. There were missions in between the sex—the Op in the Caleston Rift, the mission on Dobrovolski, the clusterfuck on Yandoa. There were even a few dates in between, too—catching the latest Nathan Gold or Alistair Theirin flick, dinner on a refueling station in the middle of nowhere while they waited for their reassigns.

Things hadn't stayed the same, of course. The Skyllian Blitz happened. Shepard's flight had been delayed and—

_No regrets._

If Guthmiller's ticket had been punched in the Armstrong Cluster, Shepard didn't know if she would be able to face Guthmiller's wife. But as Op commander, it would be her responsibility to inform the fallen's family members. She'd done it so many times, it should have seemed like putting on an old hat or a well-worn pair of baggy pants. And it was in a way.

_If the hat and pants are filled with stinging scorpions and molten lava._

Shepard knew better than to hold out hope that he was alive. You couldn't plan for the worst if you were hoping for the best. It just didn't work that way.

To her relief, her musings were interrupted by Joker. "Commander, we'll be docking with the _Azukizaka_ in three minutes," he informed her. Conversationally, he added, "Glad you know some of the Ns coming aboard."

Curious, Shepard directed her eyes towards the camera in the corner of her office. "Why's that, Joker?"

"Ns make me nervous. It only takes one move out of a bazillion ways to kill a man. You guys shouldn't know so many."

Shepard chuckled as she stood from her desk and tugged her top to straighten it. "Sometimes it comes in handy."

"I smell a story," he proclaimed.

She snorted and countered, "I smell bullshit."

"Then you should watch where you step, ma'am. Commencing docking procedures. Joker out."

Shepard allowed the smile to stay on her face all the way to CIC.

* * *

"Relay on Approach," Joker reported over MC1, his voice echoing weirdly from Kaidan's proximity to the helmsman and his announcement over the ship's main comm. "All vectors are green. We are hitting the relay in three. Two. One."

Kaidan gritted his teeth as the relay's mass effect field ignited his nervous system. For a split second his equilibrium told him he was in freefall and then the world began to spin. He hated to be standing when a ship went through a relay. The sensations were not as dramatic when he was sitting down. He forced himself to ignore it and willed his control back focusing his thoughts elsewhere as Joker hailed the _SSV Azukizaka_.

The planning session between Kaidan, Shepard and Garrus had gone well, Kaidan thought as he waited at the airlock with Pressly. Both stood At Ease, which somewhat bothered Kaidan. Pressly wasn't as big on formality as some of his previous XOs. Pressly rarely, if ever, took up a military stance unless it was to salute Shepard or Captain Anderson. The biotic chalked it up to the older man's nervousness at having a team of six N-rated commandos plus an extra four marines coming on board.

"Logistics nightmare," Pressly finally grumbled when Kaidan pressed the subject.

Kaidan nodded. Even the officers who were normally afforded more comforts like their own racks had to hot bunk in order for everyone to be able to get some kind of rest. He and Pressly had spent the better part of the last six hours trying to figure out a new shift schedule for all the crew now currently assigned to the _Normandy_. Chief Adams had been assigned two of the Ns. The others had been adjusted to CIC and medical rotations. There was no telling how long this Op was going to last. The _Normandy_ was going to feel crowded and fast. And then there were supply issues. He didn't even want to think about it so he changed the subject.

"Think this is a diversionary tactic, sir?" he asked.

Pressly nodded. "Without a doubt. We still don't have a clue as to what Saren really wants. What the hell is the Conduit anyway?" He shook his head. "The geth are probably already to Sol by now."

"I doubt there's anything at Sol that has to do with the Conduit," Kaidan objected. "We would have already found it by now."

"There are always the pyramids," Pressly said. "The Prothean cache on Mars was definitely pyramid-shaped."

Kaidan shook his head. "Nothing technological has ever been discovered in Egypt, Pressly. Or," he added, "in Central America or South America."

"Skipper on the deck," Fredericks reported with a salute as Shepard walked past him from the ladderwell. Kaidan's eyes followed the sound Shepard's quick footsteps on the deck plates, taking in her form. Damn it if his heart didn't skip a beat at seeing her. It had been doing that a lot lately. If he so much was within the same room as his CO, his concentration and control went right out the airlock. He hoped that no one noticed how tongue-tied he got when she was around or when he was forced to speak with her. At least yesterday, he had been able to focus on mission objectives while running probable scenarios based on Guthmiller's limited intelligence and not the warmth of her body as she had leaned over to point out something on the datapad.

Shepard's odd-colored eyes weren't as weary as they had been the last time he'd seen her. She no longer looked like she was carrying the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders. Kaidan felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders. Maybe she had only been tired after all.

Docking went smoothly as Shepard came to stand beside him acknowledging both his and Pressly's salutes with a nod. The ship only gave a small shutter as it interlocked with the _Azukizaka_. It was a testament to Joker's piloting ability. The man knew exactly when to engage the thrusters. In space an object literally stayed in motion until something made it stop or slow or the gravity of a planet was being a bitch. Some ships' helmsmen just stopped all thrusters and let the ship collide with the dock and depended on the ships shields to keep from getting too much damage—which was never really a good idea; there was so much that could go wrong. Joker maneuvered the _Normandy_ into place using all available thrusters at his command coordinating airlock control with Hendricks.

 _Normandy_ 's VI announced the arrival of the new comers when they boarded and went through Decon. Two Gunnery Chiefs, an Operations Chief, a Lieutenant and the rest were corporals. No one's rating was higher than an N4. The N fire team was the Scorpions. Kaidan swallowed: Shepard's old fire team. These were heroes. This was the team Shepard had led at Terra Nova. He remembered the look of surprise when Admiral Hackett had contacted her yesterday during their planning session.

"You wanted people you could trust, Shepard," Hackett had told her. "There are only four marines. Your aliens should be able to integrate into the team."

"The Chiefs shit themselves?" she had asked.

Hackett's only response had been a smile.

"Thank you, Admiral."

"Don't screw this up, Shepard. We're counting on you and the _Normandy_."

"I won't let you down, sir."

Kaidan focused on the present as the airlock cycled open, and he got a good look at the new crew.

The Scorpions' team leader had towered over Shepard by a good eight inches, his solid frame encased in heavy Hahne-Kedar armor with peculiar green and black camo markings. Four red lines were painted over one side of his breastplate nearly hiding his N4 rating.

The man's face was pale gold, his features like granite. He had almond-shaped eyes like green ice that took in everything about the escort team. His face softened immediately upon seeing the Commander, his thin lips parting to reveal straight white teeth.

He turned back and looked at his team. "Gents and bitches," he told them, unable to keep the pride out of his voice, "let me introduce you to the meanest motherfucking bitch you will ever be so lucky to meet."

Kaidan froze, about to open his mouth to protest such disrespect of his commanding officer, but Shepard's neutral face morphed into a grin, and she reached forward and clasped the N in a fierce bear hug, the big man dwarfing the Commander's lithe frame.

"They didn't tell me you'd be on this Op, Snake," she all but crowed, the lines of her face smoothed by the genuine smile on her face. "Thought you'd been reassigned already."

The tall man named Snake grinned back. "When they said the _SSV Normandy_ , I knew we were gonna go kick some ass, boss." He pulled out his rifle, the snap-hiss reverberating against the airlock. "Locked, cocked, loaded and ready to fuck up every geth in sight, ma'am."

Shepard laughed, looked over at Pressly and Kaidan, and then laughed again at the two men's expressions of incredulous disbelief. She indicated them with a quick flick of her wrist. "My XO, Lieutenant Commander Charles Pressly and my ground detail commander, Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko."

Snake saluted. "It's an honor, sirs. Second Lieutenant Andy Ponce Márquez. 'V'rybody calls me 'Snake.'"

"Yeah," another N—a woman—said. "We should'a nicknamed him 'Pussycat.'" She was Shepard's height with spiked platinum blonde hair, tawny brown eyes and dark eyebrows. Her armor was the same make as Snake's and also had four red stripes across her breastplate hiding the N4 rating. She grinned a feral grin, but the smile didn't reach her eyes like a real smile would. There was something… off about her eyes. "You should'a heard him scream when that space snake on Torfan dropped on his shoulders."

"'Torfan?'" Pressly asked, watching the Ns closely, his brown eyes bits of stone.

"Wouldn't know," Shepard said with a shrug, then narrowed her eyes at the woman. "None of us were there. Were we, Carpenter?"

The N named Carpenter shook her head. "Nope," she replied, her features neutral. "Ops all look the same after a while. If you've seen one prefab unit filled with crates in the middle of B-fucking-E, you've seen 'em all." Her generous lips parted into a grin once again. "But he still screamed like a little whiny bitch." She cleared her throat before standing rigidly at attention and snapping off a crisp salute. "Gunnery Chief Lela Carpenter, Infiltrator and Designated Marksman of the Scorpions."

 _Designated Marksman_. Kaidan realized what was wrong with Carpenter's eyes. It took a certain type of individual to be a sniper. The N had probably seen everything there was to see down the barrel of her scope. Her eyes were dead and, by the look of it, had been for quite some time.

"You're his Second?" Shepard asked, an incredulous note in her voice, an eyebrow raised.

Carpenter shrugged. "I'd be his CO if I'd been smart and applied for a commission." She shook her head and shared a look with Snake. "Figured I'd be dead before I got this far up the ranks."

* * *

"Internal emission sink engaged. We are running silent," Joker reported as his fingers flicked over the amber control screen in front of him. "ETA to Casbin: twenty-five minutes."

Shepard, looking over the graphic display of the Hong system in front of her, nodded. She and Kaidan were the only ground team crew members in CIC that were fully armored—their Hahne-Kedar hardsuits painted in green camo. Shepard's team would be making the first drop in the Mako in forty minutes. The Scorpions would be dropping at another zone opposite the Mako's location. They would be using the extra Mako—dubbed _Precious_ by Carpenter—that had been loaded in the cargo hold at the Attican Beta refueling depot.

As Kaidan monitored the system for geth comm. frequencies for chatter from his station on the bridge, he could only hope that Guthmiller's team hadn't actually set foot on the planet on purpose. There would be serious political repercussions for humanity if they had. Were Shepard anyone but a Spectre, the whole Op would be illegal. Casbin was a Sanctuary World: the ecosystem of this planet was just beginning to form. The data the _Normandy_ had retrieved from the only functional military surveillance drone in the system indicated that Guthmiller and his team's shuttle had been shot and forced into the upper atmosphere of Casbin. Only a twelve second transmission had been sent, and it was nothing but static. Guthmiller and his team of Ns were more than likely dead. The thought weighed heavily on the entire crew—especially the Ns. _No one left behind_ was the unwritten rule of the Ns.

Guthmiller was the sole reason Elysium was even still standing today. The young N4 had been on shore leave when pirates had attacked the colony. He held them off until reinforcements had arrived several hours later and was awarded the Star of Terra for single-handedly defending the colony. Even Shepard hadn't received that most prestigious award for her defense of Terra Nova. Kaidan suddenly wondered why. She should have. Hell, her whole team should have.

Even with the casualties.

Shepard looked down at Pressly where he stood at the Nav station. "Adjust heading, decimal oh oh six," she ordered.

"Adjusting heading, decimal oh oh six," Pressly repeated with a nod before complying.

"Heading adjusted, decimal oh oh six," Joker confirmed. Shepard called up another display, pushing the previous one out of the way and tapped her finger on a trajectory.

"Comm., patch into the Theshaca network," she said. "Route all entrance and exit vectors to my data pad."

Kaidan repeated her order and complied, calling up the screen to do so and transmitting the codes for download. "All entrance and exit vectors incoming," he told her as his screen filled with data.

"Deploy drone on my mark," Shepard told them and waited several beats as her order was repeated.

"Mark."

"Surveillance drone is aweigh," Joker reported. "Heading oh decimal two five niner."

Shepard shook her head with a frown. "Adjust drone's heading, two decimal five niner."

Joker confirmed the drone's heading change.

An alarm went off on the bridge. "Commander, we've lost two drones at two different locations," Pressly reported. Nervous sweat glistened on his forehead.

Shepard could only nod from her position overlooking CIC. "We're running silent. The drones aren't."

"At least geth ships don't appear to have windows," Kaidan remarked quietly from his station beside Joker.

"Amen to small favors," Hendricks replied. Even she seemed unusually quiet.

The system was crawling with geth. They had already identified three drop ships, four squadrons of fighters and the exit vectors of at least two mother ships. The _Normandy_ was only one frigate. There was only so much they could handle. The ship was quick and silent and could pack quite a punch, but Shepard didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. If things got too hot, she'd pull the plug on the Op and back off for reinforcements. They would have to fall into FTL in order to escape to the nearest relay. Luckily the exit relay was located in the same system as the entrance relay. Going to the next system to get Intel was going to be trickier. Hong was the only system with an exit relay though the cluster itself had two other deactivated relays. No one knew what lay beyond them.

And anyway it wasn't like they would have months of time and hundreds of technicians to turn on the ancient constructs.

As they continued to evade the geth and get a better idea of what they were going to be up against, Kaidan allowed himself to think back to the day before when the _Normandy_ had docked with the _SSV Azukizaka_ and met the two fire teams that would be joining them. One team was a team of Ns, three of whom had previously served with Shepard on various missions. Out of all of them, Shepard was the only one who rated an N7. Kaidan found himself wondering just how many Sevens there were out there.

Kaidan snapped back to the present when another alarm blared.

"We've lost another drone," he reported to Joker who swore colorfully causing Hendricks to chuckle.

"Drone down," Joker relayed to Pressly.

"Was that even anatomically possible?" Kaidan wondered out loud.

"Nope," Williams confirmed as she stepped onto the bridge and leaned over the ensign at the weapons station. She frowned down at her data pad.

Joker looked over at her. "You've… tried it?"

Her lips quirked, casting a sidelong glance at the chief helmsman. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Joker exchanged a smile with her, then shook his head. "Sounds painful. Gotta be careful. I'm fragile."

Hendricks harrumphed at him. "Fragile, my ass," she said under her breath. Kaidan laughed. Ash arched a brow. Joker looked...sheepish?

_Might just win that pool._


	27. From Casbin with Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _So much for having a decently written chapter full of adventure and excitement... and plot..._

Shepard revved the Mako's engine, her lips puckered with annoyance. The vehicle didn't so much as move.

Well... a little.

The wheels were spinning. And the vehicle shifted to the right a bit. It was better than... well, no, it wasn't. The Mako seemed content to stay put. Greenish-brown muck sprayed from the aft and center wheels. Both front wheels did nothing and the HUD only flashed at her. Lenny, the VI, spat out some nonsense but she hit the mute before hitting the accelerator once again.

And going nowhere. Quickly.

_Gah!_

She shot a frustrated look at Kaidan. He only stared back at her, just as displeased and flummoxed with the situation as she was.

"Well, this was...unexpected," Garrus commented from his seat at the weapons station behind Kaidan. The turian's flanging vocal chords sounded just as confused as Kaidan felt.

Shepard shifted in her seat to get a good look out the port side window. "Are we," she asked, a faint thread of hysteria in her voice, "Are we sinking?"

"Negative, Commander," Kaidan was quick to reassure her. He was just as relieved with that prospect as his commanding officer. It had been the first thing he checked. "Just stuck." On Casbin. In the middle of an Op that, thus far, was nothing but one big clusterfuck.

He gazed out the view port at the planetscape before them. The star Hong was slowly creeping to the horizon, casting Casbin's orange and green sky with reds, pinks and shadows of violet against the wisps of clouds. Without oxygen to refract the star's light, there were no true blues anywhere to be seen.

Shepard gave a sigh that was crossed between sounding indignant and exasperated. "We're stuck." She definitely sounded indignant. "With six-wheel drive."

"Actually, we're down to three," Kaidan told her before he could stop himself. The look the Commander threw him made him want to get out into the muck and run. The biotic was glad she didn't pull her pistol on him. He gave her a sheepish grin.

Frustrated, Shepard smacked her palm on the dash. "This isn't happening," she stated, eerily calm. "We are not in the middle of enemy territory stuck in-" Here she leaned forward to get a good look at what, Kaidan wasn't sure, and her lips pulled into a larger frown- "in primordial _soup_ with only three goddamned functioning wheels."

Kaidan would have laughed at the situation had it been anyone else. He looked at the display in front of him. They had two hundred meters to go to get the geth outpost. It was just over the ridge. And they were stuck at the bottom. Of course, had Shepard not _flown_ over the last ridge—in a vehicle that was _not made to fly_ —they would still have six wheel drive and not have buried the tires trying to get out. But he valued his career and his life enough not to point that out to her.

He and Shepard were the only humans in the Mako. He and Shepard hadn't been told that the marine fire team members weren't artillery trained. All the scenarios that he, Garrus and Shepard had run—and wasted valuable time running—were absolutely useless to them now. Shepard had Joker drop the team of four at the crash site in mountains to the West of their location. The team leader, Operations Chief Naomi Noble, had landed wrong and broken her ankle and was currently out of commission.

The infantry team was greener than... well... Could their luck get any worse?

"Commander," Joker's voice interrupted Kaidan's thoughts, and Kaidan physically cringed. _Please let this be_ good _news._ "The Scorpions just radioed in. They've found a geth listening post just north of your position. They're taking it out, but they're under heavy fire."

"Any casualties?"

"No, ma'am," he assured her. "Not yet, anyway. Gunnery Chief Carpenter says _Precious_ is holding up against the armatures. They're taking out the transmitters and then heading to the crash site to pick up the other team." He was quiet a moment. "Ah, Marines," he said casually, "Muscles are Required, Intelligence Not Essential. Who the hell names a _tank_ _Precious?_ You'd think- _"_

"If Carpenter has a big enough gun, she can kill you at one thousand meters," Shepard told him, her fingers flicking over the panel, routing more power to the power train from the reactor.

Joker laughed. "My gun is so much bigger right now. Orbital bombardment, anyone?"

"Radio silence, Moreau," Shepard told him irritably.

He was silent again while she tried firing up the mass effect generator. Casbin's primordial goo had managed to clog all but one of the vehicles thrusters. The Mako nearly tilted on its side.

"Gear up," she told them, almost pouting. "We may have to walk to the outpost." As everyone but Tali pulled on their helmets and pressurized their hard suits, Shepard tried the thrusters and revving the engine, but only managed to jostle everyone around.

"Well, this is exciting," Wrex commented, his deep voice dripping with heavy sarcasm. "Squishing bacteria for fun and profit..." he trailed off. "Geth gunship in bound, Shepard. We're sitting pyjaks out here."

"Pyjaks?" Garrus asked as he called up his heads-up display. "Those cute little primates on Tuchanka?"

Wrex guffawed. "Tasty," was all he said. Garrus shut up. Kaidan didn't want to picture Wrex chomping down on a monkey, but- _Oh, great._ There it was. And the image wasn't going away even as he tracked the geth ship and locked in the sites for Garrus and the others to fire. He resolved to picture something else.

 _Shepard naked_ , his brain supplied unhelpfully. He gave a sigh, shifting his seat. _Not helping._

"How far to the outpost?" Tali inquired.

Kaidan pointed in the general direction. "Just over that rise." He was glad for the distraction, but Shepard was looking at him peculiarly. Surely, he hadn't been undressing her with his eyes. Not on the battlefield.

"Gunship is in range," Garrus said.

"Take it out," Shepard ordered.

Garrus did as told, the main gun reverberating against their ears and knocking the Mako back a ways. The mass accelerated shell nicked the geth ship's shields. Wrex and Tali alternatively fired the secondary automatics while Garrus reloaded the main gun. Shepard tried to get the Mako unstuck again and failed. She swore colorfully. It had almost been as colorful as Joker's comment earlier that day. Kaidan routed system after system to keep the kinetic shields operating while the geth ship fired their plasma based weapons.

Garrus fired again, the shell hitting its mark. The gunship exploded into a fireball.

Naturally, it was now falling toward them. Not like there was any other direction it could have fallen. Just to give them a break.

"Out!" Shepard ordered, popping the hatches. "Move!"

The crew of five scrambled to get out of the Mako, barely avoiding the blast as the larger geth gunship collided with their tank. Kaidan strengthened his shields with his biotics as debris rained down. Casbin's oxygen-free atmosphere snuffed out most of the flames quickly.

"Commander!" Joker's concerned voice pelted Kaidan's ears.

"Lost the Mako," Shepard reported. "Heading to the outpost on foot. Pick up the fire teams at the crash site once they've secured their location."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

* * *

Lying on his belly in proto-lichen, Kaidan handed the binoculars back to Shepard, who used them to peer down at the strange out post.

"Five sentry stations," he said with a shake of his head. The team was stretched on their bellies beside him.

"What is this?" Shepard wondered aloud. The outpost itself appeared to be nothing more than five sentry stations surrounded by a fence and two flower petal-shaped objects. From this distance, the geth patrolling beneath the sentry spires looked like white lice against the green and brown moss-covered ground. Their darker counterparts were stationed in the spires above them.

"The hubs there," Tali supplied, "are the main nodes. Taking those out should disrupt the 'thoughts' of the geth long enough to destroy them all. There's not much here though. This could be the secondary base."

Shepard nodded. "This means that Snake's team-"

"Got all the damned fun," Wrex grumbled.

The Commander laughed. "All we need is a thresher nest and our day will be complete."

"One can only hope, Shepard," Tali commented drily.

"Huh. Little quarian has a quad after all," Wrex said approvingly.

Tali cocked her head at Wrex. "I don't think I want to know what that means," she said uneasily. "Or if it was a compliment."

"Coming from a krogan it's a compliment," Garrus said. "But, yeah. You don't want to know."

Wrex snorted at them.

Shepard was already crawling away. "Garrus, take out the geth on the towers. Wrex, Tali," she looked at each of them in turn as she unclipped her sniper rifle and handed it off to Kaidan, "you're with me. Alenko and Garrus, keep them off our backs while we set the charges."

Garrus' rifle cracked three times before it overheated. Kaidan managed to get the other two and one white armored geth who was patrolling near the gate. His rifle was smoking when he finished.

"Good shots," Garrus complimented. "Didn't think you could do that."

Kaidan had no idea how to answer the turian. Was that a compliment or an insult?

* * *

Shepard palmed an explosive from the case on her leg wishing she had brought one of her marines on this assignment. Williams had a cracked rib, so she was out. Even with the gene-mods, ribs took a few weeks to mend. A hundred years ago it would have taken months. She shuddered at that thought. To be out of action for that long would be a nightmare. They didn't have that much time to waste. Not with the geth and Saren.

Still, she regretted not bringing one of the others. She trusted Kaidan to watch their backs. He was an expert marksman, but preferred pistols to rifles. She didn't like only having two snipers—with both at the same position—while her team pranced around setting explosives.

The Commander mentally shook herself as she moved into position. She'd never pranced anywhere, and she was sure as hell Wrex had never either. Tali? Bounding and excitable, yes, but not a prancer. Shepard didn't keep company with anyone who pranced.

Udina? Probably.

_Figures._

Peering over a boulder, she signaled Tali and Wrex to take up positions. Wrex would provide covering fire to make up for the lack of an extra sniper.

Time to blow shit up.

She'd never admit it, but explosions gave her a thrill. Who needed to hack anything when it was easier to blow it to Kingdom Come? Gerry always—she quickly cut her line of thought. Thinking about Guthmiller wasn't productive. She hadn't thought about the man in years and she wasn't about to start now that-

She focused on Alenko. A subordinate. One she had gotten to know and trust.

And had handed her rifle to as though it were second nature...

Shepard attached the charge to the nearest geth structure, careful to avoid line of site with any of the meandering patrols shaking her head to clear it of thoughts of Kaidan. Now was not the time. Guthmiller had been the only other man she had ever trusted enough to hand off her weapon to. She knew that she would get it back in the same working order as she kept it.

Kaidan took care of his equipment. That was why. That was the only reason. Liking him had nothing to do with it. Hormones didn't have anything to do with either.

No.

She shook her head again and primed the charge before moving slowly to the next location and placing another charge in an inconspicuous area that she thought might do the most damage.

"I've been spotted!" Wrex's gruff voice hollered in her ear just before the sound of his shot gun echoed off the ravine walls.

"Tali, how many have you placed?"

"Only two!"

"That'll have to work. Move out. Garrus, Kaidan, open fire!" She pulled out her shotgun, charging her biotic shield as she did so.

* * *

Joker was biting his nails.

Ash found it amusing—disturbing, but amusing. Not that she paid attention to the helmsman's idiosyncrasies. No. Because she didn't. Except when she got stuck on his team when they played Rook and she had to force herself to pay attention to his little tells. She hated being his partner. He was so hard to read. Probably why they lost so much. Not like when he played on Hendricks' team and the two helmsmen beat the shit out her team because the two of them knew each other so well.

"Stop staring at me, Williams," Joker said startling her.

She turned back to the weapons station. "Who says I was?"

"You just did, Doll."

"Stop biting your nails."

He twisted around in his seat, gave her an indecipherable look and then his expression morphed into... relief? Damn he was so hard to read.

"Okay, what was that look for?" she asked.

He shrugged, turning back around in his seat, calling up a screen. "Making sure my mom hadn't suddenly appeared on the bridge." He gestured with his hands. "Poof!" Joker's voice raised an octave, mockingly, "'Hi, Jeff, sweetie! Stop biting your nails, dear. They might get caught in your esophagus. We don't need _another_ trip to the doctor this week.'" He shuddered.

Oh, no, he didn't. Did he-? Ash's nostrils flared. The sudden anger that was there was muted when Ash gazed down at her badly bitten fingernails. She frowned, holding her hand up, looking at her nails. "Great, so not only am I _my_ mother," she commented dryly, "I'm yours too."

"That's a form of inbreeding that I really don't want to hear about, Ashley," he told her.

She laughed and grinned cheekily, realizing how it had sounded. "You and me both."

He cleared his throat, looking around the bare bridge. It was just he two of them, he at the helm and Ashley at the weapons station behind him. The new schedule was totally screwed.

"'Two children in two neighbor villages,'" he began, sounding a bit unsure, "'Playing mad pranks along the healthy leas.'"

Ash blinked in disbelief. Did Joker just quote Tennyson? _Circumstance._ Really? Could the day get any weirder?

An alarm blared at Joker's station. "Oh, shit!" he cried, his fingers calling up monitors and screens of different sizes. "Commander?"

"Lost the Mako," Shepard's voice came over the comm. She sounded as though she were just giving information about the weather albeit a little pissed that she were standing in the rain. "Heading to the outpost on foot."

"What the shit?" Joker blurted.

"Pick up the fire teams at the crash site once they've secured their location."

"Aye, aye, ma'am," he confirmed as his fingers danced over the controls before him. "Lieutenant Marquez, what's your twenty?"

"Joker, either call me Snake or pronounce my name right," the N bit back.

Joker groaned at the comm. "Oh, I'm sorry." He clearly was not. "I mistook you for a subordinate, Marquez." He made no effort to change the pronunciation. "Commander Shepard ordered me to pick you and the other team up at the crash site once you secured it. Repeat: What's your twenty?"

The comm. was silent.

"Snake says we'll radio you once we've secured the site," Carpenter's voice came over the comm. "Sir."

Joker cackled and Ash looked at him as if he'd grown a new head. "I've just signed my death certificate," he complained. "Think the Commander will notice if we bomb them from orbit?"


	28. Sic Itur Ad Astra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _  
>  **Warnings:**   
>  _   
>  _Character deaths. Graphic violence is graphic._

Dr. Karin Chakwas was in the process of removing an application of medi-gel from Serviceman Tomas Granger when the call for injuries came.

"Medics needed in the cargo bay," Joker announced. "Shepard says it's bad."

The doctor was already moving, gesturing for Private Lu to finish removing Tomas' patch—a burn from a short in his omni-tool wiring. The skin on back of Tomas' hand had puckered under the nodes of the glove where the haptic interface was attached.

Karin suited up. The cargo bay was still open and the sanctuary planet they were currently discharging on had no breathable atmosphere—for humans at any rate.

"Any exsanguination?" she asked as she slipped into the form-fitting envirosuit.

Joker's voice sounded distant when he answered. "Bleeding?" He paused a beat. "Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of blood."

Karin had never known Jeff to be squeamish, what with his love of macabre horror vids. She checked the emergency kit and left the infirmary, trotting past the mess hall.

"You've got an external camera, Joker," she said as she stepped into the elevator. "I don't. Tell me what happened."

"The cable snapped," he told her quietly as the elevator descended. "When they were loading the Mako. She-" He took a deep breath. "Karin, one of the crew...they... they don't have their head anymore."

Overcome with sudden despair, Dr. Chakwas braced her hand on the wall. _Dear God._ What could have gone wrong down there. "Anything else?"

"One of the new guys doesn't look like he's got an arm. And there's... there's guys on the ground. Shepard managed to jump over the cable, but it tripped up Kaidan and Garrus. Tali was clear." He was silent until the elevator door began to slide open to Hell. "It looked like Beck's suit. Beck pushed Tali out of the way."

Karin knew the dangers of offering hope, especially when it came to Joker, but disregarded the first response that came to mind—the first response that came with the job of Chief Medical Officer. "I'm sure there are other hardsuits that look like Lieutenant Hendricks' make, Jeff."

He said nothing as Karin rushed in to work, calling several off-duty medical personnel. This had not been war. This had been an accident. Random. Completely random. Chaos. She couldn't even get to the dead. She had to see to the injured first. She couldn't reassure Joker that Hendricks was still alive.

* * *

Ashley entered the infirmary and did a double take. It was a flurry of motion and bodies—not just the bleeding ones. Every bed in the room was full and two marines were being treated from chairs. Between the doctor and her hospital corpsmen and the injured not able to be properly treated by the AutoArts, the infirmary felt small and compact.

Ashley frowned. So much for getting the medi-gel on her ribs removed this go-round. Not that she would begrudge any of the wounded men and women their time with the Doc and her crew, especially since the accident on Casbin. She'd heard something had happened down there, had heard it loud and clear over the comm, but she wasn't expecting to come off duty and find a very literal bloodbath in the infirmary.

"I can't help you right now, Ashley," Dr. Chakwas confirmed over treating the nearest wounded N.

The N4 in question was a young man named Dawson. He was held down by Private Lu, Alenko and— _damn it, what was her name?_ -one of the FNG marines that were part of Operations Chief Naomi Noble's fire team.

Chakwas was performing laser surgery on the man's torso with the help of the AutoArt—the automated articulating surgical system. The technical term was AutoArt, but most of the sailors on board called the system the A-ASS—when the Doc was out of hearing range.

"Grafting commencing, Doctor," the robotic arm's VI announced. Unlike most medical VI's Ashley had encountered over the years, the _Normandy_ 's medical VI had a male voice. It ran on a separate system than the _Normandy_ 's integrated VI—whom everyone called Bitchin' Betty or Betty Bitchbox. Ashley couldn't remember what her real designation was.

Ash put a hand to her mouth when Dawson bucked suddenly, blood splattering each of the hospital corpsmen and Dr. Chakwas.

"Damn it," Alenko said, reaching for a better grip of the young man, "he's seizing again."

 _My God._ Ashley backed out of the infirmary before she was privy to anymore nightmare fodder, swallowing the bile that had risen.

She turned and came face to face with a grim-faced Commander Shepard.

"Oh, Commander," she gasped, surprised, snapping off a salute.

"How's Dawson doing?" Shepard asked, inclining her chin towards the door, her eyes wary.

How the hell was she supposed to answer that? Ashley wanted to know, but thankfully she bit back the response before it popped out of her mouth. She gave a shrug. "Way out of my league, Skipper," she told her CO. "They're doing surgery now."

Shepard blinked, then eyed the door pensively. "Still?"

"I-er," Ashley hesitated to report what she had just seen. "I was on duty when the accident happened, ma'am. I don't even know how most of them got injured."

"Two cables snapped when the engineering crew were loading what's left of the Mako into the cargo hold," Shepard explained, her eyes becoming flat and unreadable. She shook her head. "Six injured. Two dead." She ran a shaky hand through her chopped brown hair.

"Ma'am, when's the last time you ate?" Ashley asked, concerned.

"I'm fine, Chief."

 _My ass._ "Commander," Ash began, but the woman standing in front of her cut her off with a raised hand.

"Drop it, Williams," she ordered. "I lost two good men and may lose a third tonight because of my mistake. That's four down in a month." She laughed depreciatively. "Heaven forbid should I break my record. I wouldn't have a crew left."

"It wasn't your-"

"Tell that to their families." Shepard shouldered past Williams and walked into the infirmary.

Dr. Chakwas' voice greeted them. "I'm sorry, Commander," her tone was calm yet fragile. "We lost him."

Ashley turned to look and regretted it. Dawson's still form-chest wide open and still bubbling blood-his eyes looking at her lifelessly, wouldn't be an image she would soon forget. The doors slid shut, cutting off the sound of blood dribbling to the floor, and the Chief bolted for the nearest head, her stomach rolling.

* * *

Usually on Alliance warships, no matter the size, the starboard side head was designated as the officers' head and the port side designated as the enlisteds'. Since the addition of the two extra fire teams, the Commander and XO had loosened the regs a bit when it came to the mingling of officers and enlisteds—specifically when it came to using the on-board bathroom facilities, opening up both rooms to all personnel. It was the only way to accommodate everyone on such a small vessel.

The starboard head was the smaller of the two rooms with two shower stalls, two toilets, a urinal and a sink with a mirror. The port side head had four shower stalls, four toilets, two urinals and two sinks with a counter top and a mirror that spanned one wall.

Kaidan had picked the port side because the starboard side was full—as usual. He was hoping he would get lucky since most of the crew was still on duty and have a shower to himself.

So when Kaidan entered the small room with the intention of showering Dawson's blood from his hands, face and hair, the last thing he expected was to find Williams with her face in the shitter.

"You okay, Williams?" he asked, setting his towel and toiletry kit on the sink counter and reaching down to unlace his boots.

The Chief's answer was a gargling moan and: " _Herp. Urp. Hurk._ "

_Yeah. Me too._

He thought about waiting for Williams to finish blowing her grits but cleanliness over gentlemanliness prevailed. So he turned on the shower, stripped and climbed in, the shower door immediately going opaque to simulate privacy. He'd served in the Alliance long enough and on enough vessels to know that there was no such thing as privacy in the Navy or in Marines.

But he couldn't very well enjoy the hot water as it pelted him because of Williams gargling ode to all things ill. It wasn't like he would enjoy it anyway as the water rinsed the droplets of another man's blood from his hair and body, the water tinting dark pink momentarily. He stared at his feet, leaning his head against the wall under the shower head, watching the droplets spatter against his skin and the steel plates of the shower floor.

It had certainly been a frustrating last few hours as they had struggled in vain to patch a marine who had been split stem to stern by a snapping cable. As he thought back, he wondered if there was anything they could have done differently to save Dawson, Le Souef or Guo.

Le Souef, who had been closest to the Mako's lifeless shell, had been the first to get hit by the wayward cord. The cable had snapped just beyond the Mako's chassis and had whipped across the young man's body, severing his torso, exposing heart and lungs and dousing the deck with dark blood. The cable's end had embedded itself into the bulkhead well away from the rest of the crew.

It was the second cable that had done the most damage. The second cable had snapped in the middle of the bay as the team was still dodging the other swinging cord to get to Le Souef's body. It had flicked outward instead of upward, tripping engineers and personnel, breaking bones, severing appendages, splitting open Dawson's chest. The frayed end had caught Guo at the neck and severed his head just after he had pushed Tali out of the way.

Kaidan had been able to jump over the cord decreasing his mass with his biotics to jump higher, but there hadn't been a damn thing he could have done to stop the cables from snapping to begin with.

Not a damn thing.

It frustrated him to feel so impotent. He'd been standing right there. He gave a sigh.

He'd been helpless to save Jenkins too. All he could do for him was shut the kid's eyes and push on. At least Shepard had been gentle about it.

Shepard.

_God._

The look on her face when Dr. Chakwas had told her that they'd not been able to save Dawson broke his heart. It was a fleeting instant before her facade fell into place, but it was still there.

As he soaped up, Kaidan vowed to talk with Shepard just as soon as he got the chance. They were on route to the Vamshi system. Maybe Shepard would—

Williams' sounded like she was dying out there. Whatever the Chief had eaten certainly wasn't agreeing with her. Kaidan decided that, after the Chaplain finished Dawson's Last Rites, he would go back to the infirmary and get something for her.

"Give it Hell, Doll," Joker said, hobbling into the head.

Ash only moaned weakly.

"What'd you eat?" he wanted to know as he stepped closer to the nearest toilet. "Because I'm not eating it."

"Go piss over there," she rasped, gesturing feebly to the urinal. "Don't piss by my head."

Joker snorted. "Yeah. Sure," he said, his voice hard. "Ask the cripple to -" The Chief puked again interrupting Joker's tirade, and he shuffled away from her.

"Yeah, okay," he agreed, "I don't want duck sauce on my dick, so I'll be using the pisser as far away from you as possible."

Kaidan huffed a laugh.

The helmsman shuffled to the urinal closest to the showers. "Quit staring at my ass, Alenko," he commented casually as he struggled to balance his crutches, keep from falling on the unforgiving deck, and unzip his pants.

"Quit eying my dick," Kaidan quipped back as he scrubbed soap over his face.

"But it's so small," Joker whined. "Can't look away."

Kaidan rinsed his face and shook the water out his eyes. Self-consciousness and pride made Kaidan look down and inspect himself. Still the same. _Just right._

Joker cackled. "Made you look."

The Lieutenant shut off the shower and toweled dry, refusing the cocky pilot's bait. He wrapped the towel around his waist just as the door became transparent again. Ashley was bent over the sink as he stepped out of the stall. She splashed water on her face, rubbing her eyes.

"You all right, Williams?" he asked, his voice laced with concern. He'd never seen her so pale. Not even when she had been running for her life on Eden Prime.

"Yeah—ah, yes, sir," she answered. "Lost it there a sec."

"What'd you eat?" Joker demanded as he flushed and shuffled over to wash his hands.

Williams shrugged. "Not used to seeing anyone's chest wide open."

The helmsman blinked. "Huh?"

"Dawson," Kaidan stated. He hadn't realized she had been in the infirmary.

She nodded.

At the moment, taps blared over the comm and Williams scurried back to the toilet in a fit of dry heaves. Kaidan joined her at the next one.

Funny. He didn't realize he was sick until then when the day's events finally caught up to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _  
>  **sic itur ad astra:**   
>  _   
>  _"Thus you shall go to the stars"; Virgil - Aeneid book IX, line 641_


	29. Officers Club

Ash watched helplessly as Joker gave Lieutenant Hendricks a hug. It shouldn't have affected her. It shouldn't have. Scuttlebutt said Joker specifically requested Hendricks for the Eden Prime mission. He hadn't been shy about flirting with her—even with regs against fraternization—and they seemed to know everything about the other.

"Aw, you guys are so cute," Operations Chief Lela Carpenter groused from her prone position on a medical bed. "Makes me ill."

"I can hug my best friend, Carpenter," Joker said, not pulling away from the red head.

"Are there fraternization regs on this boat or can I just fuck a Jorge when I want?" Carpenter asked. The infirmary, which had been bustling with activity, tensed and some eyes looked at Commander Shepard who was seated on another medical bed as Private Lu applied a patch of medi-gel to an abrasion on her arm.

Ash even looked at Shepard, almost desperately so, before catching herself. She was not jealous. Nope. Williamses didn't get jealous. They sucked it up and dealt with it. And regs. There were regs. And-

"No fucking on my ship," was all Shepard said. The Commander's voice was subdued, but the point was clear.

"Ew," Hendricks and Joker both agreed as they quickly broke away like each thought the other might have Scale Itch or something.

"Damn," Snake grinned from his post by Carpenter's side, "they both friend-zoned each other."

Joker glared at the N stubbornly then cast another glance at Hendricks before hobbling out of the room.

"Rebecca," Dr. Chakwas told Hendricks after Joker had gone, "you can go. I expect you to rest at least two days. Gregor can take over your shifts for you."

The young helmsman grimaced before nodding. "Aye, ma'am."

After Hendricks had left, Alenko spoke up. "Joker won't like it."

"He's too happy she's alive to worry about it," Shepard told him.

Ash swallowed hard and wondered—not for the first time—what it would be like to know someone cared about her as much as that.

* * *

Shepard sighed and rubbed her eyes, the data pad's images not fading from her retinas fast enough. Funeral preparations were never an easy thing. Since she had no next of kin, she wondered if the Alliance would put as much thought into her funeral or if they would just stick her in a coffin and dump her into the nearest star. She hoped so. The less media the better. She was sick of the tabloids and pundits. Everyone had their own two credits to throw in about the Sole Survivor and her curse. Thankfully, this was a classified mission and no one but the brass knew her ships' roster. It both irked her and brought her peace that she didn't have to face Serviceman Le Souef's family. She would have had to lie about it anyway.

"You're tired, Shepard," Dr. Chakwas stated, took a sip of coffee. Her faint smile held a touch of sadness and the dim light of Shepard's cabin made her eyes seem darker.

The Commander nodded. Too tired. "Yeah," she agreed and leaned back in her chair, taking her coffee with her. The bitter liquid had gone cold and she made a face, replacing the mug on the conference table. "So where are we?"

Chakwas sad smile became bemused. "Not much further than we were an hour ago," she said. "The Sol system is too out of the way from the Traverse to waste fuel-" She held up her hand to stop the argument forming on Shepard's lips. "I'm merely repeating your own words from earlier, Commander." Shepard settled down and grabbed her coffee again and again made a face when she sipped it.

"We would still have to backtrack through the Arcturus relay to get to Sirona. It would put us out of the way five days. Sirona isn't located near the cluster's mass effect relay. Again a waste of fuel."

Shepard nodded. Alliance personnel with no next of kin were allotted a 'death allotment,' or DA, so that the soldier could be buried at the soldiers' expense instead of the Alliance. It was supposed to cover the cost of fuel to get the soldier to the burial ground, the coffin and the funeral proceedings. Each funeral was left up to the individual CO. Shepard had once served in a unit where the CO simply put the bodies in the coffins and shoved them out the cargo hold with only a few words. They had been in the Terminus systems in the middle of a cluster, heading for a nearby star system when a malfunction had occurred with the drive core, and they lost most of Engineering.

"When are we rendezvousing with the S _SV Warsaw_?" Dr. Chakwas asked.

"Two days," Shepard replied, a pensive shimmer in the shadow of her eyes. She was more shaken with the accident that she cared to admit. All because the damn Mako-No, because _she_ had gotten the damn thing stuck and couldn't move it when they found themselves downwind of a falling geth ship. She was sure she was responsible for the cables too. After all, she had been the one to sign off on the inspection reports. There had to have been something she missed.

At least the Op was over and all bases including the hidden one were taken care of. They hadn't found anything, not one clue as to what Saren was up to. The entire mess made her uneasy, and a flicker of apprehension coursed through her at the thought of the entire thing being some kind of diversion.

She had said as much in her report to FleetCom and Admiral Hackett had agreed with her instincts, but had congratulated the crew and gave his condolences on the loss of people.

Two days. The memorial service would take place on board the _Normandy_ in the cargo hold, but that's as far as the actual planning had gotten to. Shepard still needed to decide where to place the bodies. She didn't just want to dump them in space.

Guo had been born on the Vercingetorix Outpost on Sirona. Dawson had been born on Titan. Chakwas had originally suggested taking the bodies to Sol and allowing the coffins to go into the Sun. Shepard had briefly entertained the idea before going over the financials and fuel costs. Neither Marine had enough DA for the journey and though her crew was important to her, they had to stop Saren. The coffins were designed to be spaced and to burn in atmospheric entry. So far, they had no reason to go to Sol. It was out of the way and Saren already had a good head start on them.

For the moment, Shepard comforted herself with the idea of the memorial service happening before they headed back to Artemis Tau to get Matriarch Benezia's daughter. Or kill her, whichever needed to be done.

* * *

Shepard was one of the few COs that Kaidan had served with that had an open door policy, yet he hesitated, hovering at her cabin door wondering if Shepard would speak with him about losing crew mates. It was one thing to lose a team member whom they had served with only briefly, but Dawson had served with Shepard for several tours before she was stationed on the _Normandy_ , describing the younger man as the "little brother I never wanted to have."

Kaidan swallowed, remembering the look of raw pain on her face when Chakwas had told her, bluntly but gently, that Dawson had not made it through the night. In that one instant Kaidan wanted nothing more than to take Shepard in his arms and hold her, but her facade fell back into place almost immediately, shattering any daydream about his CO he may have had.

It wasn't like there would ever be a chance. Not only were there geth and Saren and War, there were the Regs, too. But damn it, there wasn't anything in the Regs that said he couldn't be her friend.

He steeled himself and walked in. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness of the Shepard's quarters. Dr. Chakwas was there, sitting at the conference table, a mug of something steaming in her hand. Shepard was opposite the doctor, her mug not steaming.

The doctor smiled at him. "Lieutenant Alenko."

"Doctor." He looked at Shepard, held her gaze briefly. The dimness of her cabin enhanced the dark circles under eyes, making them look bruised against the paleness of her skin. "I didn't mean to interrupt, ma'am."

"The door is always open, Kaidan," Shepard told him, a warm smile on her face. Kaidan. She only called him by his first name when they were off duty.

"I'll come back when-"

"Nonsense, Kaidan." Chakwas rose and crossed the coffee pot on Pressly's desk. "The Commander and I were finishing up going over last minute details for Guo and Dawson." Her voice wavered but her face stayed neutral as she poured a cup of coffee and held it out to him.

"And Le Souef?" he asked as he accepted the cup and stepped further into the room. He took a seat beside Shepard, his leg grazing hers as he sat. He studiously ignored the tingling sensation.

"Le Souef has family on Demeter," Shepard told him. He nodded, took as sip of the hot, bitter brew. All three bodies were currently in specially-made coffins in the cargo hold. Only two more days after two weeks of Hell, and the _Normandy_ would rendezvous with the _SSV Warsaw_ to collect the extra teams and Le Souef's body.

Shepard's doors swished open, interrupting the sudden silence, and Pressly walked in looking haggard.

"That shift was too damn long," he said, then noticed Kaidan and the doctor and looked sheepish.

Chakwas offered him a cup and he perked up a bit, nodding his thanks. He took a sip and then studied the coffee in the cup. "Who's reserve are we drinking?"

Shepard shrugged, a grin forming on her lips. "Gear Adrift."

Pressly snorted, took another sip. "That should teach them to stow their stuff properly."

Shepard's grin became a chuckle and Kaidan smiled at that.

"It tastes similar to Mindoiran reserve," Chakwas commented lightly.

Shepard shrugged. "Wouldn't know." Kaidan glanced sideways in surprise. She shook her head, her smile fading. "I haven't tasted anything from Mindoir in-" She thought about it a moment, her expression pulling into a small frown. "Well, since I was seventeen, I guess."

"Why not?" Pressly asked, his eyebrows hiked, surprised. Then he added: "Ma'am."

Shepard waved him off. "Cut the 'ma'am' crap. We're off duty, Charles."

Pressly visibly relaxed, took another sip of his coffee.

"To answer your question," Shepard said as she rotated the coffee mug on the table between the palms of her hands, "I guess it was because they—the social workers—were always pushing the fact that I was alone. 'Here, Calleigh,eat this. It's from Mindoir (where everyone you knew and loved were either taken or died horrific deaths). It'll make you feel closer to home.'" She shrugged. "I know they weren't really. They were trying to get me to connect to something. But it sure as hell felt like it at the time.

"When I finally ended up in an orphanage on Arcturus, they were shocked and appalled whenever I would turn my nose up at food. Especially if they told me they had it flown in from Mindoir." She gave a small, mischievous smile. "Only made me refuse food all the more and they ended up branding me a danger to myself." She frowned. "I joined the Alliance the first chance I got. Happy birthday to me. But here I am. All grown and kicking ass."

"You've been through more than David had at your age," Chakwas noted.

"I'm not weighed down by metals," Shepard countered.

Pressly laughed. "You will be by the time you get his age, Shepard."

She gave a barely repressed shudder. "Great. Let's give the vids more to talk and discuss about me."

The XO nodded jovially. "According to those extranet reports my wife likes to read, you've been spotted recently in asari space."

Shepard quirked an eyebrow. "Do tell."

"Apparently there's a matriarch that has chosen your genes to spawn her daughters."

Shepard made a face and then hid behind her coffee mug. " _God._ " She took a sip and studied the brown liquid with a frown. "I don't know whether to be flattered, annoyed or completely weirded out by that."

Kaidan nodded, then grinned suddenly as a thought struck him. He raised his coffee mug. "To Commander Shepard, may her genes propagate the asari culture and carry forth her hallowed love-children."

"Here, here," Pressly agreed.

* * *

Liara blinked, vision fading from black to violet to gray. Her head throbbed, the room—where?—spinning. She worked her tongue to wet her lips. Her mouth tasted of carbon and salt and felt like she had swallowed sand.

By the Goddess she hurt. Her scalp especially. No. Her shoulders. No. Her back. No. No, her eyes. Yes. Especially her eyes. The blue glow of the barrier curtain hurt and... was that a krogan? Briefly Lady Aethyta's gruff laugh came to mind. Liara, surprised at such a memory, tried to shake her head but found that she could only move it minutely.

She was trapped in some sort of field. Had the krogan-?

 _Therum._ Saren was after her. There were geth.

 _Oh, Goddess, the volcano._ Liara swallowed what little moisture she had in her mouth as fright clamped down onto her. How long had she had been unconscious? If only she could reach her omni-tool.

The krogan peered up at her from his perch on a beam outside the barrier curtain.

"Bout time," he sneered, his voice echoing strangely against the curtain, the sound frequency bending through the shielding, reverberating against the walls and bending again to tap against her ear drum. "Open up."

"I'm trapped," she told him, her voice rough with disuse. "How long was I unconscious?"

"Long enough," he snorted, paced in front of what had become her holding cell.

Liara tried again. "How long was-"

"I look like a timekeeper to you?"

"How long-"

"You're just gonna keep it up till I come in an beat your brains in, huh?" The krogan was studying her with a curious intensity.

"Yes," she told him, getting frustrated that she couldn't move, couldn't... do something. She had little idea of what she could actually do to him. Maybe if she could anger him enough, he would find away to break her out.

 _And then what, Little Wing?_ She asked herself. _Geth. Guns. Shooting. Explosions. That's what._

"A day or two," he told her after mulling about it. "Local time's funny. Short."

"A day or two local time then?" she asked, trying to get her bearings. She felt exhausted, needed energy, food. She hurt from the top of her scalp to the tips of her booted toes.

"Didn't say it was local," was all he said. He pointed a geth into the opposite direction in which it was headed. "Don't set the charges there. Saren wants her alive."

"Why?" she wanted to know.

The krogan only sneered at her, done with answering questions. Her stomach growled and she wondered again how long she had been unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For the record, Liara's time line is different from Shepard's and crew (several months has passed for Shep, only a few weeks has passed since Liara appeared in the story). I totally borked my original pacing by going off on the Geth Incursions tangent. Sorry, guys._


	30. Sea of Crises

"Alenko, increase mass by two percent," Shepard ordered as her fingers flew over the screens in front of her. Luna's surface was coming at them too slowly. At this rate, they would get captured by the nearby station's gravity instead of the small gravitational field of Earth's moon.

"Aye, aye."

The mass effect generator hummed and vibrated in areas that were different than the other vehicle. Fredericks, nervous from losing the last Mako, checked and double-checked the output, running diagnostics on non-essential systems.

"Relax, Private," Alenko spoke up. "She's purring like a kitten. Just the way she's supposed to."

Fredericks gave a nod. "It'll take some time to get used to a new vehicle, sir."

"Precious is a good girl, "Shepard said, an amicable smile crossing her lips as she patted the dash. "She did good during the incursions. She'll do good here too." _Provided you don't fuck up again_ , a small inner voice reminded her and her smile faded. In her mind's eye, she promptly shot the ghost, focusing instead of keeping her team and herself alive.

* * *

Joker rolled his eyes at the comm. "'Precious?'" he echoed, his mouth turned down.

"You're not going to just let it go," Pressly commented dryly from the Navigators' station on the bridge, "are you?"

"It's a tank," Joker insisted. "It needs a name like-"

"Princess," Hendricks interrupted from her station to the left of Joker.

Joker was indignant, sending a glare of green in his friend's direction. "No! Like-"

"Cupcake?" she asked, batting her eyes playfully.

"Hell, no!" Joker crossed his arms.

It was quiet a moment. Then Pressly spoke up. "Sue," he said.

" _Sue_?" Joker craned his neck to gaze at his XO.

Pressly shrugged. "My wife's name."

"It's a _tank,_ " Joker emphasized again, gesturing with his hand at the console. "Not a boat. And it should be called-"

"Bluebell," suggested Hendricks, laughter in her voice. "No, wait. Six Wheels!"

Joker sighed and rubbed his eye. It was beginning to twitch. As much as he cared about Beck, she could be a pain in the ass sometimes. Not that he didn't expect it. They'd known each other long enough to put up with the other's shit. And it was a relief she was still alive, but—He looked at the time. Three more hours before Ashley came on shift. It would be nice to see her. She was fun when her feathers got ruffled.

No. Wait. She was no longer on administrative duty. She was _in_ the damn tank.

_Damn it._

He didn't miss her though. She nagged him about biting his nails too much. He nibbled on his thumbnail out of spite, earning him a cough and a _look_ from Beck.

_Gah._

_Women._ Did they _always_ have to play the _mom_ card?

"Big Ka-Boom," Shepard's voice came over the comm, startling the bridge crew.

Joker straightened immediately. "Commander?" he asked as he pulled up a topo, ready to dart in with the _Normandy_ and get them if he needed to.

"Big Ka-Boom," Shepard repeated. "A tank name."

 _What?_ The helmsman was careful not to shout _That's not a tank name!_ to his commanding officer. She scared the shit out of him when angered. Liked blowing shit up. _Nasty habit._

"Yeah, if you're a krogan," Pressly grumbled in reply.

Wrex's snort filled the speakers. "Give the krogan some credit, human. We know how to be creative when naming vehicles."

"Like what?" Alenko's voice asked over the comm.

"Really Big Ka-Boom," Wrex told him.

Shepard laughed. "I think we'll stick with Precious for now, Wrex."

"Heh. You started it."

* * *

As the Mako surged across Mare Crisium of the moon called Luna, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya flipped through holos she and few of the engineers had taken during what the humans referred to as "down time." She thought it was a weird phrase and told them repeatedly that if anything went "down" on the flotilla, it was cause for panic. But most paid her no mind. It was probably a human thing. Then again, most of the Council Races paid little attention to the quarians anyway. _A human thing_ , she decided just as she felt the tale-tell heart flutter that came with the way her people were treated by the rest of the Galactic Community.

Her fingers stilled over a holo taken by Chief Adams (she knew it was taken by him because his thumb managed to become a permanent fixture in every holo he took). The heart flutter picked up pace a she gazed upon the holo. She couldn't see her own face, but knew that she had "smiled for the camera" when Adams had asked her to. Wedged between two humans—Corporal Guo and Private Fredericks—she looked sorely out of place in her envirosuit, but both humans didn't seem to mind as they had huge grins plastered on their faces. None of the humans seemed to mind her—well, maybe XO Pressly, but he always seemed cranky.

 _Cranky._ Such a funny human word. Curious, Tali had looked it up the moment she had heard Chief Williams mutter it in regards to the krogan ( _"Cranky much? Damn krogan."_ ). Truthfully, Tali had hoped it was some sort of human explicative since it had not translated. Humans were especially creative with explicatives and expressions.

They were such a mystery—being so new to the Galactic stage. She had never seen a human until coming to the Citadel, but remembered hearing about them when Shem'Dorei nar Ikitomi had returned from his pilgrimage and was accepted into the Rayya's crew. His pilgrimage gift had been information about the humans, their homeworld, and he had even brought back several inert pieces of a security mech ( _"Look! Five digit hands. Like the batarians and asari." "And Vorcha. Ugh."_ ). Never in her life did she imagine she would end up on the humans' homeworld's only satellite! She hadn't even received her first suit when Shem had been formally accepted and remembered trying to reach for the mech's head through her bubble. Back then it was just she and Auntie Shala. Father was away so much... Auntie Shala had-

"Look out!" the krogan bellowed suddenly.

Tali's heart lurched into her throat. The last time someone had yelled for her to look out, it had been Corporal Guo, pushing her into the lockers right before the broken cable in the cargo hold had severed his head.

Tali calmed herself, her fingers already pushing the image folder out of the way and calling up the Mako's HUD without having to be ordered by Shepard.

Precious responded to her commands as easily as Lenny had, giving her the sensor readings she needed, feeding them into the vehicle's weapons tracking system.

"Tali," Shepard began, then paused. "Thank you." The Commander turned her attention elsewhere. "Wrex, Fredericks, take out those turrets."

"Aye, aye," Fredericks answered immediately, though he was already arming the automatics.

The krogan let out a guffaw as the Mako's cannon took out one turret.

"Turret 26-A down," Alenko confirmed.

Shepard mumbled something about tax dollars and all the humans aboard-Alenko, Fredericks and Williams-nodded their consent. Tali had no idea what tax dollars were, but made a mental note to look it up when they got back to the _Normandy_.

* * *

Ash was so glad to be off administrative duty. In the last three weeks, it had one big cluster fuck after another. Casbin and the deaths of good people. The damn geth. Four outposts and one primary base in the Traverse. And she was helpless to do anything because of Shepard's executive order. Weapons watch on the bridge and in CIC and weapons maintenance in the armory was all she had been allowed to do.

The attack on Eden Prime was still fresh, and between the incursions and the accident, Ashley was having difficulty compartmentalizing the way she knew she should. It irked her to no end that Shepard wouldn't let her participate until the final base. Hell, the most action she had seen in the last three weeks prior to getting clearance for ground team on Solcrum-with the exception of the influx of wounded into the infirmary-had been a godawful Blasto stim. (She cared not to enkindle anything, thank you very much.) Still, clearing the geth out in only three weeks and only having four fire teams was pretty damn good. Impressive as hell, that was for sure. She chose to focus on the good and set about focusing on the mission as they stood waiting for Shepard to set the charges so they could get past the inner airlock of the first bunker.

"You know this base well, Shepard," Wrex commented from his cover against the door. Shepard looked up from the munitions charge she was arming, giving a shrug.

"I was stationed here after Akuze," she said, her tone light, but the glint in her eyes was haunted.

"Threshers," Alenko murmured softly. Then: "They put you on admin, ma'am?"

Shepard nodded, continued arming as Alenko handed her the primer. "I was pretty messed up." Then she grinned brightly. "Who do you think trained Carpenter?"

Alenko gave a mock shudder. "Scary woman," he told her. Agreeing with his assessment, Ash bobbed her head in a nod.

"This from a human that can manipulate mass effect fields to crush someone?" Tali remarked, deadpan.

"Tali," Alenko said, "her weapon of choice is technically illegal in Council Space."

"Nah," Wrex replied, "Too modified. Handy in fight though."

Ashley nodded in agreement remembering the Elkoss Combine Widow Maker 260Z sniper rifle Carpenter had checked into the ship's armory. Who knew where the hell she'd picked up that baby. Ash had grown up around rifles and that thing scared the hell out of her. But regulations were Regulations. The rifle's VI was programmed to keep the anti-tank rifle just under being banned. Unlike Ashley and Shepard's current pay load and the three Shepard had "requisitioned" on Sharjila. So what if Ashley's inventory was a little vague on the details? Those five rifles had saved their asses at that last geth base. Too bad they didn't have their toys on Edolus. Taking down that damn thresher would have been easy as cake. Well, a little easier. Maybe.

"Alright," Shepard said standing and grabbing her helmet, locking it into place. "If this doesn't open the door, I don't know what will. Five minutes. Let's not be underground when it blows. Gear up and pressurize."

Ashley flipped on her suit's VI and tapped the SCABA command on the haptic interface. Her helmet's visor immediately lowered and began pumping recycled air through the system.

* * *

Sometimes systems could be hacked. Sometimes systems could be overridden with omni-gel placed over the right connections and electrodes. Most of the time, however, it took blowing it up in order to get the thing open. Kaidan grinned, relieved that no one could see his satisfied smile. Shepard loved blowing shit up. Five out of six times in the last three weeks, she had had a chance to hack or use omni-gel to gain entrance, and she had opted to either pelt it with anti-tank ammunition or set charges. Hell, even one time she had shredded a door by warping the surrounding gravity field with her biotics. He still needed to ask her about that maneuver. It had been damned useful against those husks that had come pouring out of the overrun base.

"The door's hot, ma'am," he reported as he inspected his omni-tool, scanning for eezo cores that kept the drones aloft and functional. There were a lot of them.

"Form up behind the Mako," Shepard told them, "we'll take them out once we pop the door. Aim for their cores. Once we take those out, they'll just float out into space."

Kaidan blinked. "De-pressurize the base, ma'am? What about survivors?" He hadn't seen anything on the scanners, but there was always a chance. He thought of Akuze and Shepard. Surely she gave it thought. She had thought about it on Edolus.

The Commander sucked in a breath that would have otherwise been inaudible had she not had the breathing apparatus in place. "Can you close the airlock door from here?" she asked.

He knew the answer to that before she'd finished the sentence. The external door was the only door on a separate system. The airlock door was slaved to the other interior doors. Blowing one had shorted them all out.

"No, ma'am," he answered finally.

She knew, he realized as he hacked into the mainframe again, readying himself for the onslaught of drones. She'd known about the doors before they even set foot on Luna. And still she gave the order to blow the doors before confirming survivors. He swallowed, praying he never had to make any type of decision like that.

The drones poured out as the doors slid open, their barriers slowing the slugs from hitting their cores. The full battle lasted nearly thirty minutes so great were the drones' numbers, but they were dispatched without any injuries. Kaidan was panting, exhausted when it was finally safe to enter the base. His stomach gurgled, giving him notice that none of the others could hear.

"Negative contacts," Tali confirmed, then she blew up the two red rocket drones she had managed to hack. "Drones down, Shepard."

Shepard nodded, peered into the base, her breath rasping against the mic in her helmet.

"Base has been gassed," she said quietly, calling up her omni-tool to confirm.

"That damn computer," Williams growled angrily.

"Yeah," Shepard agreed. "Move out. Three of its main hubs are here. The others are out at the training facilities."

"What's this place then?" Fredericks inquired, cocking his head to the side.

"The barracks," Shepard told them and entered the bunker.


	31. Evil Power Hungry Cow

Joker rolled his eyes. "You should reprogram that thing," he said waving around his spork. A pea skipped off at his gesticulating and rolled over to Pressly's side of the table. Ashley wondered if she should take cover before Joker's peas flew at her. The LT had already taken off for higher ground as soon as the first pea had hit his tray. By the look on the helmsman's face, the first one had been unintentional. The second one—tossed casually at the back of Alenko's head—had not. The pause in Alenko's stride and the sharp intake of air had made Joker grin and both Pressly and Ashley rolled their eyes heavenward. Alenko's gait had increased as he headed for the officers' quarters.

Pressly looked up from his data pad with mild disinterest. "I know I'm going to regret this," he lamented. But: "'Reprogram' what?"

Joker took a pea from his spork and tossed it at Pressly. It bounced off the XO's bald spot and onto Ashley's tray. _Ew._ Pressly sighed dramatically and turned his attention back to his data pad muttering under his breath. Ashley's frown deepened, eyes darkening. Did the idiot not realize they had lost members of the crew? He hadn't acted this way way when that kid Jenkins had died. She huffed and flicked the pea out of her chow space. It skittered across the table onto the floor where the little floor bot brushed it away.

"Huh," Joker mused, "two birds, one pea." There was a faint light of humor in his eyes but other than that he was just as unreadable as he usually was.

"Your antics will come around and bite you in the ass one day, Joker," Pressly told him, eying him critically. "I could hold a Captain's Mast in your honor."

"You are totally on my 'No fun' list," Joker replied and shoveled food into his mouth, the Alliance-issue cap on his head blocking his eyes from the view of his fellow crew mates.

Pressly rolled his eyes turning his attention back to his data pad. "That's what you said the second day of this cruise." He reached for his coffee and took a swig.

"Yeah, well," the helmsman grumbled around his chow. "Just reminding you."

Ashley finally had enough of Joker's mouth and stood, dumping her tray into the incinerator and stalking off.

It was the day after Dawson's memorial service. No one was in high spirits—with the exception of Joker. He was too busy making googly eyes at Hendricks. How they found time or the way to feel each other up without breaking Joker or getting caught—That thought made Ashley all but stomp to the elevator. _I don't care. I don't care. I don't care._

Shepard hadn't been seen since the day before, just after the service, and Pressly announced this morning that their CO was taking a personal day and didn't wish to be disturbed. For the first time since the start of the tour, Commander Shepard's door was closed and off limits. It put the whole crew on edge.

Private Lu—who was the assigned sentry for Shepard's cabin—had only seen the Commander once earlier when she had brought Shepard her morning meal and coffee. "She looked rough," the private had reported before Pressly had promptly stepped in and told Lu to resume her post.

Ashley sighed, waiting for the elevator to ease down into the bowels of the ship. She still had two more hours before she had to go back on duty. Vid-mail time. She was hoping to hear a reply back from Sar. The Alliance had just started airing the vid-ads of the _Normandy_ and her maiden voyage and the Eden Prime War, and Ash wanted to know if Sar still was thinking about joining the Alliance. Scuttlebutt said that most of the footage was taken while they were still in dry dock and the rest came from long-winded politicians to make nice with the turians... She outwardly snorted at that. The day the turians made nice was the day that—Ashley's eyes cut to Garrus' form as he tinkered with the new Mako. Well, at least _he_ was making nice. Didn't mean every single one of them didn't want to annihilate humanity. _Look at what happened with Granddad and Shanxi._

She shook her head and went to check her mail.

* * *

Joker watched Williams go, a small frown on his face. When he was sure she was out of earshot—namely the elevator door closing—he tossed a look at Pressly. "She acting weird to you?" he asked, allowing himself to relax a bit.

Pressly looked up from his data pad with a nod. "I've already made a note about her behavior."

 _Well, shit._ That wasn't good. This wasn't supposed to be—"Sir," he started, leaning forward over his chow.

"Do you know who her grandfather was?"

Joker nodded. It was the first thing he looked into when she had come aboard on Eden Prime, but Alenko, Captain Anderson and Commander Shepard had all wanted her on the _Normandy_. All they saw in Williams was a good soldier dedicated to the Alliance who'd recently, and very tragically lost her squadmates to war. Her record wasn't classified and her scores were off the charts. She even had a few commendations.

It was that aspect that had initially made him suspicious to have her on board. Someone like _that_ posted groundside with no challenges to increase Rating? Only pariahs excelled at boot camp and then bombed out when the real work began. And the _Normandy_ didn't need a pariah on her that would make her and and her crew look bad. He wasn't about to let that happen. Joker may not have been able to override Captain Anderson's decision, but had Ashley not checked out, the helmsman had plenty of pull once Anderson had been replaced-albeit not as much as if he were under the command of someone like Hilliard, McDowell or Lang-to see to it that Williams got the boot and the finger. She'd proved herself though. He didn't think Shepard or Alenko knew or even cared. And now that he knew her as a capable noncom, he didn't either.

"I don't think it matters," he said after a moment. "Armistice happened before she was born. She's good at what she does. All her reports are accurate and thorough. And the Commander and Captain Anderson wanted her on board."

And Alenko. That thought didn't sit well with him. Hadn't sat well with him since Ashley had almost gotten sucked into the atmosphere of Porolan and kissed Alenko in the airlock because he'd saved her. The airlock had been nagging him since it happened, the image of the two locking lips forever burned into his memory. It shouldn't have bothered him. They weren't Jorges. They knew the regs and the consequences. It was their thing. Not his. It didn't matter. The _Normandy_ mattered. The mission mattered. Getting the next promotion mattered.

The XO sighed and nodded. "You're right," he conceded. He even looked a bit sheepish. "Old habits."

Joker nodded, digging into his chow again, his thoughts still on Ashley and Kaidan. It irritated him that their fraternization got under his skin. He shouldn't—didn't—care. It was their prerogative. Shit happened on a boat. Brass wanted to ignore it and make it go away with regs because of complications, and, most of the time, the two parties participating in random acts were more careful; however Williams was General Williams fucking granddaughter and Alenko had over twelve commendations—not exactly fuck-the-regs attitudes.

It surprised Joker that the Lieutenant would want to damage his carefully constructed career for a piece of ass. It was an awesome, groin-tightening ass, but not career-damage worthy. No piece of ass was worth that. And scuttlebutt said that Shepard had been livid when Pressly had showed her the footage, but then again Burns and Guo weren't exactly the bastions of truthfulness. One could only play telephone for so long before "the green grapes are delicious" became "the monsters of Grapeville will eat everything."

* * *

Kaidan had the next twelve hours for down time. He was hoping the Commander would make an appearance before then. He knew she had to be hurting. Dawson had been one of hers. Since being grossed out by flying food—it was on his plate, damn it!-he was currently doing his laundry. He leaned against the tiny washing unit, arms crossed at his chest and legs crossed at his ankles just staring at the floor as the washing unit entered its spin cycle.

They were still no closer to Saren than they had been on the Citadel, and it had been over two months. Not for the first time, Kaidan wondered what was so important about the damn beacon. He still remembered the creatures that skittered on the edge of his vision—dark things with multiple eyes and legs. Large spiders? He shuddered, his mind wandering away from the vestiges of a dream that was almost but not quite there.

He was worried about Shepard. She had tough decisions to make—not unlike de-pressurizing the Luna N training facility barracks. She was going to have to let a few things slide. He shook his head, remembering Vyrnuus and the painful lesson the turian had taught him. Who knew what would happen if Shepard started cutting the corners Vyrnuus had? Kids died because Vyrnuus had bent the rules. So far Shepard had played it close to the vest—or there abouts—but— _Those are nice tits. Just the right size._ They would fit nicely in his hands.

Kaidan blinked, his head jerking up to look into odd-colored eyes. His face heated up as he realized that Commander Shepard had been asking him a question and had been standing there a few moments.

"Commander," he said quickly straightening to attention and snapping off a salute.

"Laundry duty?" she asked, choosing not to comment about where his eyes had been. He cleared his throat, noticing the laundry bag in her hands.

"Almost done, Commander," he assured her, sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

She shrugged, dropping the sack at their feet and leaning against the drying unit with a sigh.

"Are you-" he started carefully, choosing his words. "Are you all right, ma'am?" At her raised eyebrow, he added, "The last few weeks have been pretty rough."

She shrugged. "Compared to what, Lieutenant?"

He opened his mouth but closed it. Good question. He had no idea what she had gone through prior to serving on the _Normandy_. She'd been serving just as long as he had, and she was Special Forces. Only she knew what her demons were, but maybe...maybe she would talk to him about it. But was it worth the risk?

He gave a shrug. "Before this, I was assigned to one of the marine platoons aboard the _SSV Kilimanjaro_ ," he explained. "The most action I saw for six months was the news, two routine pirate raids and Nathan Gold's 'Spearing Amaterasu."

Shepard pulled a face at the mention of Nathan Gold. How she hated his stims. "He is such a poser." She gave an unladylike snort. "'Golden Boy', my ass."

Kaidan chuckled. "The effects weren't as over-the-top as his others. No casualties while making that one."

The Commander cocked her head to the side. "You keep up with that?"

He shrugged. "Well, Anhur isn't in the news so much these days."

Shepard's face went carefully blank. "Anhur was a mess," she said. He waited for her to elaborate. She didn't.

"Did your team ever serve there, ma'am?"

The neutral face morphed into confusion. "No," she told him. "I wasn't aware the Alliance had gotten involved."

To Kaidan's knowledge, when the Anhur government had dropped the anti-slavery laws for the batarian population, the Alliance's stance was neutrality. There were rumors that Special Forces were shipped in to help the Abolitionists. He told her as much.

She shook her head. "Never heard anything concrete."

"What about Torfan?" he asked, knowing he was pushing his luck with that question.

"You should have asked Snake when his team was on board," was all she said. The tone she used cautioned him to not press the subject.

Shepard swallowed, casting a covert glance at him through lowered lashes. What was it about Kaidan Alenko that made her want to spill her guts and confess every dark secret hidden at the back of her very large and dirty closet?

Torfan. She'd been there. Not on the ground team, but part of the reserve unit. She'd just come off administrative leave when they'd called her for the mission. Anderson, a lieutenant commander at the time, had called her himself.

"Want some payback, Lieutenant?" he had asked. It was the first time Shepard had met David Anderson. But Shepard and her platoon hadn't been planetside. Major Kyle's platoon had dropped first, and he promptly had gone off the deep end. Two-thirds of the strike team had been killed before Snake, Dawson and Carpenter stepped up. They hadn't left a pirate alive.

"We got 'em for you, Calleigh," Dawson had grinned at her when she saw him next.

Shepard had requested immediate transfer to their team since they had lost their CO on Torfan. Anderson had used his clout to push the transfer, similar to when he pushed Ashley's transfer to the _Normandy_.

Shepard studied Alenko, taking in his physique. The man certainly took care of himself even if he was only trained for light armor. She still couldn't place what it was about the man that attracted her so. Maybe it was his eyes. They were dark and unfathomable yet compelling and magnetic all at the same time. An enigma. He never quite relaxed around her though. He was a subordinate, so she didn't expect him to relax completely in her presence, but it didn't lessen the fact that she wanted him to.

_Regs, Calleigh. Rules. Boundaries._

The book wasn't necessarily going to help them when they caught up to Saren. She wasn't going to lower her standards to Saren's to catch the bastard though. She'd told Garrus as much when he had asked her, but it worried her that everything wasn't black and white as he seemed to think it was—or was supposed to be.

"This is the first time I've been back to Sol for longer than forty-eight hours since before Torfan," she heard herself tell Alenko. _So much for Boundaries._

"You were... at Torfan?" he seemed taken aback that she'd told him.

She held up her hands. "Not groundside," she stressed. "You want details, you should have talked to Snake. You would have gotten it out of him eventually. He's fascinated by biotics." She cleared her throat in an anxious little cough. "But that wasn't what I was going to talk to you about." She studied him a moment, watching the play of light from the washing and drying unit skitter across the strong features of his face. "When's the last time you've been home?"

"Visited my parents last year," he told her. "I have an apartment in Singapore."

She whistled. "Hazard pay must be good to afford that."

"No worse than one on the Citadel, ma'am." He shrugged. "It's home."

She nodded.

He looked at her a moment, temporarily forgetting himself. "You have a place anywhere?"

She shook her head. "Where ever personnel command says. That's currently Thoreau Mesa."

"How'd you-?"

"Won it in a wager," she said, though the glint in her eyes told Kaidan there was much more to it than a simple wager. Her smile was just small enough to be secretive.

He grimaced in good humor. "Remind me not to play poker with you, Commander."

"You never know, Lieutenant," she said playfully, her expression changing minutely, her voice husky, "you might like it."

Her steady gaze bore into him, and Kaidan sucked in a breath. "You could probably talk me into anything, Commander," he said, just as playfully. "And yeah," he added, in a lower, huskier tone, "I might just like it." His nervousness slipped back to grip him as he hoped she didn't throw him across the room for being so bold.

"Careful, soldier," she said, closing the distance between them a little. "I might just try-"

"We are approaching the Charon Relay," Joker's voice sounded suddenly over the ship's primary comm system, effectively breaking any moment that may or may not have been developing. All the amusement died in Shepard's eyes and she regarded Kaidan with searching gravity. As Joker relayed the information, Kaidan switched his wet clean clothes to the drying unit, his face hot. What the hell had he been thinking, openly flirting with his commanding officer? And in the washroom of all places? At least he hadn't said something ridiculous as: "So you come here often?" Which was made more ridiculous by the fact that, why yes, the commander did her laundry every third day and, yes, he knew because he paid attention to her schedule. (Which was why, once he'd figured it out, that he switched from every fourth day to every third day.)

As the silence stretched and engulfed them, Kaidan struggled to find something-anything really-to say to the woman in front of him. The Commander's omni-tool beeped saving him the trouble, and Kaidan had to stifle a sigh of relief.

"Commander," Chief Adams voice sounded over her personal comm, "we have a situation that requires your expertise."

Shepard's lips quirked. "Oh?" she asked. By the look on her face, Kaidan was sure she already knew what it was.

"Yes, ma'am," Adams said. "We've got a quarian down here that has never played Skyllian 5 poker."

"Damn shame," Shepard said dryly.

"I've taken the liberty of sending a steward to finish up your laundry for you, ma'am," the Chief Engineer announced. "Can't have the Brass chips saying the _Normandy_ crew didn't take care of her captain."

"Got my schedule all figured out, Adams?"

"I'm sure there's a method to the madness in there somewhere, ma'am," Adams replied, deadpan.

The steward—a serviceman from the engineering deck, Jankovic—suddenly appeared at the door. She saluted sharply at both Shepard and Kaidan.

"Commander Shepard," Jankovic said. Kaidan smothered a grin. The engineer was nervous. Jankovic was the "baby" of the engineering team. She had graduated top of her class at the Academy, but the _Normandy_ was her first posting. Chief Adams had hand selected her along with the rest of the team before vetting them to Anderson. She passed muster. Now, however, the young serviceman looked entirely out of her element.

"Commander Shepard," she began again, this time not as shaky, "you are hereby relieved of laundry duty per order of Engineer Chief Greg Adams." She saluted again, her hand quivering.

Kaidan was surprised, the serviceman had lasted this long. The Commander didn't crack a smile, but looked on sternly. Kaidan had to fight hard not to break into chuckles.

"Relieved?" she questioned. "Of my laundry duties?" She crossed her arms. "The day I give up my laundry duties is the day I trade my shotgun for a hand held nuke gun," she said sternly, stubbornly.

Jankovic's pale complexion paled further, her Nordic features in contrast with the darkness of the ship and room. "M-ma'am?" she squeaked.

"Relay to Chief Adams that I refuse to be relieved of laundry duties and any attempt otherwise will be punishable by reprimand stronger than Captain's Mast," Shepard plowed ahead.

"Aye-aye, Commander."

"Dismissed, Jankovic."

The serviceman all but ran out of the room. Shepard waited a few beats after the door slid closed before chuckling and pulling up the haptic interface of her omni-tool.

To Kaidan she said, "I'm an evil power-hungry cow." How the hell was he supposed to respond to that? he wanted to know.

"Uh, not a cow, ma'am," he answered with staid calmness as he opted for a neutral tone. Never second-guess a woman's weight. Right?

Shepard gazed at him, one thin eyebrow uplifted in surprise.

"Adams, your serviceman is on her way down with a message for you," she told told the Chief Engineer.

"You're an evil, power-hungry cow, Commander," Adams told her, shocking Kaidan. He sputtered, his eyebrows dipping into a frown.

"It'll put a little meat on her bones," Shepard said to Adams, all the while wearing an "I-told-you-so" grin.

"She's just nervous around you, Commander," the Chief Engineer said. "She's got a good head on her shoulders."

"Didn't realize you were the type to traumatize the pukes," Kaidan said after he had processed what had just happened.

Shepard gazed at him, her eyes bright with mirth. "You haven't served under Captain Anderson enough times. 'The more meat on their bones, the stronger the team,' he'd say." She gave a shrug. "I'm still working on it."


	32. Out of the Frying Pan

The mess hall was unusually quiet; Kaidan noted as he collected his food tray and rounded the bulkhead to have a seat at the mess table. He remained motionless for a moment as a sudden twinge of pain behind his eyes nearly brought him to his knees. Sometimes he could tell when he was going to be hit by a migraine. Other times they would sneak up on him and kick his ass. Taking controlled breaths, he swallowed the bile and continued to walk to the mess table as though nothing happened. Maybe he could hold it off until he got some food into his belly. If he weren't disturbed—again.

His hopes of the mess being vacant at this time of night were dashed as his dark eyes fell upon Joker and Ashley. They were sitting opposite each other, glaring at one another, their faces marred by deep, grim frowns. Ash, her body tense with anger, appeared to be just holding herself from charging across the table to wring the helmsman's neck, and Joker, a muscle quivering at his jaw, appeared to be refraining from either yelling or punching her.

Kaidan didn't particularly care what was going on as long as they were both quiet and allowed him to eat in peace. The pain behind his eyes was beginning to radiate out, up and back. He hoped he could hold down his chow. He knew he shouldn't have held off eating for so long, but he really had been avoiding getting grossed out.

Kaidan chose a respectable distance—the opposite end of the all but vacant table—glad that neither the Chief nor Moreau were biotics. Food would be flying everywhere.

Joker's limbs, too.

Kaidan glanced between the pair as he forced down his food, took note of the menacing expression on Ashley's face.

_Definitely._

"Hey, L.T.," Gun Dog said, flopping down in the empty space in front of Kaidan, sloshing the contents of his tray onto the table. Kaidan really wasn't in the mood to chat and seriously thought about reprimanding the private for his blatant lack of formality. Besides, did everyone have to sit directly in front of him?

"What's eating them?" Fredericks asked. He used his thumb to indicate the battle of wills taking place at the other side of the mess. Neither had yet to flinch or blink.

Kaidan shrugged. "Search me."

Fredericks nodded, looked at the chow on his plate and proceeded to wolf it down. Kaidan felt ill almost immediately and ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, pulling his tray towards him out of the line of fire.

Trapped. He was stuck until Fredericks finished and left. He picked at his food, forcing small bites and trying to desperately to ignore the fact that Fredericks smacked when he ate.

"Preliminary scans are back," Pressly's voice distracted Kaidan momentarily—a welcome reprieve to the onslaught that was occurring across the table. Kaidan's eyes sought out the man as Pressly and Shepard rounded the bulkhead, trays in hand—Pressly also with a data pad.

Shepard's brown eyes met Kaidan's momentarily and a smile unconsciously crept upon Kaidan's face. She quirked the side of her mouth briefly, the scar on her lip stretching, as she took a seat next to Kaidan. Shepard's leg briefly touched his. Her close proximity did nothing to ease the pain in his head. He moved his leg away. Shepard searched his face before turning her odd-colored gaze to Fredericks, a tight frown forming on her lips. She raised an eyebrow to Pressly.

"Is it the intention of the Private to be blatantly disrespectful of his commanding officers?" Pressly asked in a tone that would have made Kaidan's blood turn to ice water had he been the Private in question.

The question and the tone had the desired effect. Fredericks, nearly choking on his food, shot to his feet, knocking his tray to the floor in the process, food splashing in all directions. He managed to snap off a sloppy salute, an expression of terror painted across his young face.

"I'm sorry, sirs," he barked. "It won't happen again, sirs."

Pressly glared at him. "Clean up this mess," he ordered. "Then report to Vassiliadis for duty. This is a top-of-the-line warship. Not the SSV Has-been. Now turn-to, Private."

Fredericks shrank back. "Aye, aye, sir!" He began hastily cleaning and left the mess hall, returning shortly with cleaning supplies.

"You alright, Alenko?" Pressly asked, concerned. Alenko looked like death warmed over. And everyone knew how touch-and-go he was about crowds and food. Pressly wanted to throttle Fredericks. _Damned shithead._

Kaidan nodded, his head swimming. "Yes, sir." He was having trouble holding back the bile that was burning his esophagus. The tension behind his eyes had built, and they felt like they might either fall out or explode. He welcomed both. Then maybe they wouldn't hurt so damned much.

"You look a little green around the gills," Shepard commented. Kaidan's throat worked, trying to swallow.

"I, uh, I should probably check in with Dr. Chakwas," he said weakly and standing. "Ma'am," he said by way of excusing himself. "Sir." He dumped his tray and made his way towards the infirmary, reaching up and removing the amp from the back of his skull. It needed a good saline wash anyway.

* * *

Shepard watched him go with a vague look of disapproval as she wondered how long Kaidan had been fighting his current migraine. Clearly Gun Dog's sloppy eating habits hadn't helped things. She gave an acerbic glare to the private in question as he wiped his space clean. The private seemed to wither all the more, and Shepard turned her attention to her XO.

"Tell me what the preliminaries found," she ordered with more force than she intended.

If Pressly noticed her tone, he didn't seem affected by it as he picked up his data pad and began scouring it for information. "We've got some strange readings in the outer Belt. Permission to send out the Panoptes satellites."

Shepard nodded her consent. The Panoptes scanning system deployed a grid of one-hundred radar-emitting micro-satellites that were nearly untraceable; however, the probe that deployed the grid was traceable. In an Alliance-claimed system though, Shepard didn't expect any trouble. And they were currently cloaked just beyond the outer belt, but still within the Knossos system's heliosphere where they could blend with the background radiation of the star.

Pressly made a note on the data pad and continued scrolling through the information. "According to the last transmission from the inner system comm buoy, Eldfell-Ashland Energy has a mining operation set up on the planet Therum. EAE runs the Archanes helium-3 supply depot."

Shepard nodded, calculating. "Population?" She called up the _Normandy_ 's fuel reserves on her omni-tool. They could wait to get out of the cluster to refuel, so they could avoid a stopover at Archanes. They still had at least nine to ten hours before they would need to discharge the drive. The heat sinks could be discharged then too.

"Negligible," Pressly reassured her. "Less than 300 souls on the whole station."

"It only takes one," she reminded him, and he nodded, blowing at the edge of his coffee cup on reflex. It was already cool enough to quaff if he so chose.

He took a careful sip then set aside the mug. "Scans indicate heavy seismic activity in the southern hemisphere well away from the colony."

"How heavy?"

"Super-volcano," he told her. "Santorini Mons is about to blow."

Shepard gave a low whistle, remembering the report she had read a few nights ago. "That thing has been on the news a good month now," she commented, taking a bite of her food, the tang of barbecue and spice just what she needed after the last few days' stress. It didn't quite have that _alien_ taste like the spices had been grown anywhere but Earth. It was a welcome addition to the menu. She was glad Kaidan had mentioned it in passing. Not everyone on board was Earth-stock, but the ones who were appreciated the homegrown food all the more.

"Looks like they're in the process of pulling up shop," Pressly was saying, and Shepard had to steer her thoughts back from food to the situation at hand. Two months in and she was having trouble focusing. _Two months as CO, and I've lost four good people._ She had to really focus on what her XO was telling her. "They're to be off planet by the end of the week. The company issued the press release while we were in Sol. They're only supposed to be pulling back to Archanes though. They'll be relocating their crew to the mining facilities on Zorya later this month. Wherever the hell that is." Shepard had never heard of Zorya either. It didn't sound like one of their territories. The galaxy was a big place. Who knew?

He eyed her critically like he was gauging whether she'd been there. She tilted her head as an acknowledgement for him to continue. He studied her a second or two longer than necessary.

"It's a good thing the Protheans are already extinct," he said dryly. At Shepard's questioning look, he went on, "Therum's a treasure trove of Prothean ruins. They cover the planet for the most part. In most cases, though, they're buried by rock." He scrolled down on the data pad. "The planet has a small ring belt and few dozen moons. Tidal and gravitational forces wreak havoc, and Knossos is an active star. All that differentiating gravity plays with the planet's tectonics."

Pressly scratched his goatee thoughtfully. "Strange that Therum has a breathable atmosphere with all that ash and carbon monoxide in the in the air. Humanity's making a go of it though. Nova Yekaterinburg's been there since 2167 – most of the manufacturing on Earth is because of the heavy metal exports from here. Mostly mining corporations and their miners' families. The colony itself isn't owned by Exo-Geni, so we don't have to worry about any" – he used air quotes – " _repurposing_ of the colonists." He shook his head in disgust. "Thank God for small favors."

"What about the volcano?" Shepard questioned. She wondered if they had to worry about a sudden amount of traffic leaving the system. "How large is Nova Yekaterinburg?"

"Northern hemisphere doesn't appear to have as much seismic activity at the moment. It's all focused in the southern part of the planet where EAE was focusing their efforts. Two of the larger moons don't have equatorial orbits." He called up his omni-tool to do a fast fact-check, nodding. "The helmsmen will need to be careful if they geosync – the particles in the ring system aren't ice; they're rock. The scientific consensus is that the moons were either pulled in by Therum's gravity or there was originally one large moon and something splintered it into the ring system and moons.

"Anyway, Commander," he continued, "Nova Yekaterina is one of our smaller colonies. Thirty-four thousand – mining corporations' personnel only. They haven't opened it up to full scale colonization. The ring system is stable, but it's a bitch for communication satellites. According to this, there's only certain times a day they can get transmissions out to the comm buoy system." He studied the datapad. "There are only three asari, seven turians, a volus and six salarians on the mining payroll at the facilities on Therum. All others are human. One hundred eighty-two planetside or leaving as we speak."

Shepard sat back, momentarily confused. "That's... strange."

"How so, ma'am?" Pressly took a sip of his coffee.

"Eldfell-Ashland Energy is publicly traded. You'd think they'd have more aliens – even on an Alliance territory." She gave a shrug.

He studied her a moment before asking, "Play the market, ma'am?"

"Pension," she supplied.

"Ah." He nodded. "Mine hit the crapper when CyberCor-Physiosoft Frontiers went belly-up a few years back," he grumbled.

"Never trusted them," Shepard said. "They used slave labor from the Terminus Systems."

Pressly snorted. "Figures. Damn slavers." He didn't ask how she knew that.

Shepard heartily agreed, bobbing her head, mentally counting to ten to ease the tension between her shoulders. Now was not the time to think about slavers. It took a second to remind herself that not all slavers were batarian. It took longer than a second to force herself to forget about batarians for the time being. "Anything about a Dr. Liara T'Soni?" _Focus, Calleigh._

"Yes, ma'am," her XO said, scrolling down the tablet. "She's not officially part of the mining crew. EAE was funding her excavation of a prominent ruin nearby."

"'Was'?" Shepard frowned. If T'Soni was gone then all this trouble was for what?

"They pulled her funding when they started pulling their people. She's supposed to be leaving with the last transport at the end of the week." He scrolled down more, his brow furrowing as he read. "Damn it. There's a snag, Commander. All comm activity is dead after two days ago. No distress signal. Just dead. Nearest Alliance ship is currently us, but the _SSV Omdurman_ is on its way to investigate."

"How long before they're in system?" The last thing Shepard wanted was to explain what she was doing in-system. _SSV Omdurman_ 's skipper was a Captain. In order to keep the mission to collect the asari scientist classified, they would be forced to de-cloak, and she'd have to pull the Spectre Card if the Captain wanted to run a rescue Op. Or they would have to collect the asari after the _SSV Omdurman_ ran its mission. Both ways were not acceptable to Shepard. Avoidance was the best route. Debris hit comm systems all the time. It wasn't like it was anything new.

_Akuze was a different story._

_Very different._

_So was Eden Prime._

_And Feros._

_God._

_Feros._

"Another fifty-two hours or so," he told her, drawing her away from her musings. "They're in the Styx-Theta Cluster now. A few supply depots went silent a few days ago. They were investigating. They've got to discharge their drive, and they'll be on their way."

The Commander nodded, sipped her energy drink.

"Commander Shepard," Vassiliadis' gruff voice sounded over their heads.

Shepard leaned back, casting her gaze upward. "Yes, Chief?"

"Long range scanners have picked up four geth dreadnaught-sized ships in low geosynchronous orbit of the planet called Therum," he reported. "Southern hemisphere." Shepard's blood ran cold. "We would have detected them sooner if they hadn't been using one of the larger moons to block their pings."

"Oh, how lovely," she quipped before looking over to Joker and Ashley, who were staring at each other. "Joker, stop what you're doing and report to the bridge. Downtime's over."

The helmsman didn't move from his position, his expression never changing. Taken aback, Shepard blinked. Joker had a mouth on him, but he'd never been insubordinate, nor was it on his record. She cast her gaze on Williams, eyes narrowing at the dark-haired woman. The Chief hadn't moved a muscle either. They were fuming at each other, she realized. _Well, I'll give them something to be angry with._

"If you two don't snap out of it and get your asses in gear," she all but yelled, slamming her hand on the table. "Two-Six-Ten."

Both Williams and Moreau fell out of their self-induced trance. Joker paled immediately, his eyes widening in momentary panic.

"I—" he stammered, but the Commander cut him off, slicing the air with her hand.

"Geth are in the system," she told him angrily. "Report to your station, Mister. On the double!"

The helmsman scrambled as quickly as he could to latch onto his crutches cursing under his breath as he limped away.

"I don't know what the hell that was," Shepard said to no one in particular, but loud enough for Joker, who had made it around the corner, to hear, "and, frankly I don't care to know. But I'll court martial anyone else who doesn't toe the line."

She cast her gaze to Pressly. After over two months of serving with each other, her XO didn't appear phased by the look that could have peeled the tiger stripes right off the bow. "Have Alenko and Garrus go over strategies for Surface-to-Ship extraction," she told him, suddenly not as hungry as she thought she was when she'd first decided to take a break. "I'll be in my quarters going over the preliminaries. Forward the next batch to my terminal."

"Aye, aye, Commander." Pressly got up and tossed his tray into the incinerator.

Shepard sat there a moment, running a hand through her messy locks. Geth in the system meant that the Matriarch was extracting her daughter—voluntarily or by force. Either way, they were two days behind. _With a fucking human colony planetside_. _Jesus_.

She forced down the last bite of her food and quaffed the rest of her energy drink, knowing she would need her strength later. Four geth _dreadnaughts_. She ran the figures in her head. It would be like the Armstrong Incursions all over again. Icy fear twisted in her heart. What if she failed again? They'd already lost four crew members since she'd been on board. Suddenly restless, she stood and dumped her tray.

They would extract the doctor, get out of the system and call in the Alliance to get rid of the geth. The _Normandy_ was a powerful warship, but she wasn't invincible.

"Joker," she said into the comm, knowing he would have already relieved Hendricks.

She wasn't disappointed. "Yes, Commander?"

"Full burn," she ordered. "We're on a time line. Saren's two days ahead of us. We might have another Feros on our hands."

"Uh, Commander, if the _Normandy_ goes full burn, we'll have to discharge the drive on Therum," he told her, his voice giving way to nervousness. "And more zombies? What is up with the galaxy lately?"

Shepard started, stunned speechless. They'd discharged six hours ago. _How the hell—?_

"The standard time on the heat loads is seventeen hours," she said recalling what she had learned in conversations with Chief Adams. "We shouldn't have to—"

"Yes, ma'am, I know that," Moreau cut her off. "But five of the heat loads are down. I've got systems failures across my board. Engineering is looking into it, but we're currently running with no heat loads on the starboard side. Port side is green and the engineers have managed to connect couplings to route the heat to the port side sinks, but it's gonna get hot in here. Real quick."

"Noted," she said. "Get us there as fast as possible without cooking us."

"Aye, aye, ma'am," he said. "One roasted crew being served up in thirty minutes." She was storming to her cabin when Joker asked, "Do you want me to de-cloak, ma'am?"

"No," she answered. "Keep us silent. I don't want Saren to know we're about to crash his party."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Pressly, abort the Panoptes probe to the outer Belt. I'll be in Engineering," she told her XO via their personal comms. "Mission plans just went to hell."

"Getting out and pushing, ma'am?" he asked, sounding a lot more stressed than when he'd been going over the prelims only moments before.

She gave an unladylike snort as the elevator doors shut. "Only if the committee says so."

* * *

Forty minutes later, the warning klaxon sounded as Shepard and the ground team was prepping for a drop into the volcano. The temperature inside the _Normandy_ had risen above recommended levels, and the squad had to go in blind. They were out of time.

Sweat dripped off Shepard's nose as she bent down and fastened a leg greave into place, tightening the bolts with the mechanized spanner. "Joker?" she called.

"We can't keep this up, Commander," he reported, affirming what Shepard already knew. "We'll be doing good to drop the Mako and find a place to discharge planetside. We're lucky the gravity falls within the right perimeters. We already deployed the Panoptes scanners in orbit, but it'll still be a while before we'll get the readings back." He paused briefly. "What a great planet you've brought us to, Commander," he enthused, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "With all the volcanoes and super-volcanoes. And killer AIs. Can't wait to land here. Really."

"You forgot the zombies," Shepard told him, retrieving a sidearm from Williams and attaching it to the holster on her hip.

"Thanks for the reminder, ma'am," Joker grumbled. Williams and Alenko didn't look too thrilled over the remark either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _  
>  **Two-Six-Ten:** _ _NAVspeak for "It'll take two doctors/surgeons six hours to pull ten inches of my boot out of your ass."_
> 
> _**Panoptes:** Named after the Argus Panoptes, a 100-eyed creature in Greek mythology. Based on the Argus scanning system from Mass Effect 2. Consider it the predecessor. :)_


	33. Intercourse of Ill-Repute [past tense]

_Boom!_

"Shit."

Garrus nodded, hardily agreeing with Alenko's assessment of the situation as he ducked out of cover to line up his sights on a red-armored geth trooper that was trying to flank them. It took two inferno rounds to bring the thing down, white fluids splattering and sizzling on the ground as the thermal paste ate away at the geth's strangely-shaped head.

"Keep them distracted until the Commander can get the Mako into position," Alenko ordered.

Garrus could tell always tell if Alenko was angry. The human used more colorful terminology and his voice deepened slightly. Alenko had already used the human _intercourse of ill-repute_ word twice – according to Garrus' translator, once in the past tense regarding the squad and the geth Colossus edging its way toward them… though Garrus was quite sure that he hadn't participated in anything of the sort, and definitely not with humans.

Most of the human element of the Citadel spoke Galactic Trade, so he hadn't thought of purchasing the upgrades for his translator to interpret the human languages. On board the _Normandy_ , he tried to stay away from the humans that were...problematic. There were several – including Williams – who didn't seem to want him onboard. He mentally snorted at that idea. Saren and the geth were the threats. _They_ were trying to take over the galaxy. Not the turian species. As Garrus opened fire on another trooper, he knew why the humans held a grudge against him and his species. It made his plates itch. Like he had anything to do with the Relay 314 incident.

And Saren was only making his people look worse.

Garrus found himself wishing he could say the _intercourse of ill-repute_ word in the humans' language, but humans' mouths were better shaped to pronounce the interesting-sounding syllable. The closest he'd come to being able to say it was "Tok", but no one but Tali had been around for him to say it and she had only cocked her head to the side as she helped him upgrade _Precious'_ sensor array.

_Boom!_

Williams' imaginative use of _intercourse of ill-repute_ also had to do with maternal, matriarchs, or possibly mothers, and she'd shouted for the geth to "Bring it!" Her words had confused his translator's VI so Garrus didn't know what the hell she was talking about. He'd have to ask her later and get his translator adjusted to reflect Palaven High Standard so he would at least understand it when she swore at…well, the Chief swore at just about everything now that he thought about it. She exuded a _don't-mess-with-me_ attitude. Garrus personally thought she was trying too hard, but knew that telling her would probably get him either a fist in the mouth or a round in the ass and both of those options didn't sound very appealing to him.

Another red-armored geth came around the corner of their makeshift barricade – a larger boulder. Garrus set his sniper rifle down and pulled out his assault rifle. He felt sluggish. He didn't know if it was because the gravity of Therum was twice as much as most parts of the Normandy or if it was the heat. Not only did they have to deal with the heat of Knossos, they had to deal with being less than 100 meters from a river of lava. The geth went down but not before getting a few shots in itself. Luckily, the rounds didn't make it through Garrus' shielding mods.

The sweltering heat of the planet reminded Garrus of, well, Hot Things. Home was hot, but, damn. Not this bad. At least Palaven had oceans with _water_ , not lava. Thinking of Home reminded him that he needed to call Mother. The thought brought him up short and he paused for a split second in returning fire on another geth.

His thoughts were interrupted by Williams tackling him to the rocky ground. He wished he hadn't decided to leave his helmet in the Mako when his fringe painfully hit the ground.

_Boom!_

Debris from the impact rained down on them; Garrus shielded his eyes.

"Keep your damn head down, Vakarian!" the Chief shouted before jumping up and returning fire.

Garrus, embarrassed by his lack of focus, angrily grabbed his rifle and got back into position, rubbing his throbbing fringe. He was sure she only did that for an excuse to push his ass down like he was some –

_Crack!_

"Got you, you bastard," he grumbled, his mindset somewhere between smug and not-quite-as-angry with Williams as he waited for his weapon to cool down enough to fire again.

The Colossus took a few more paces closer to them. He hoped Shepard found a path around over the hills at their back. They could only distract the machine for so long. They were already backed against a corner. If they made a break for it, then they wouldn't have any cover. The Colossus would get them for sure, if the rockets from the geth troops didn't first.

Alenko must have had the same idea. "Commander, now would be a great time to –"

He trailed off as the Mako soared over the edge of the cliff wall to their right and _landed_ on top the Colossus. The geth construct let out a whining wail that echoed against the valley walls, and made Garrus' ears ring. The remaining geth troops immediately began to close in on the Mako.

* * *

Ashley popped up out cover and fired her assault rifle at the geth's backs. "Draw their attention," she yelled, her eyes tearing up again from the heat of Therum. "That thing isn't dead yet."

Shepard was using the _Precious'_ thrusters to lurch the vehicle enough to smash it a few times, but the damn geth was still wailing and twitching under the chassis. The scene looked like a child's tantrum with a toy that pissed them off. Ash would have found the whole thing amusing had there not been two platoons of geth troops trying to kill them. Ashley and Alenko took down three more that had been distracted from the Mako. It still wasn't enough.

Wrex's voice cut across the comms. "Fuck, Shepard. You want me to blow chunks all over the controls?"

"You wanted the big gun, Wrex," Shepard reminded him. Damn her, she sounded like she was having the time of her life.

"How the hell was I supposed to know you were going to use it to _bounce_ on them instead of letting me kill something?"

Ashley's lips curved into a smug smile. Damn krogan was sick. "Motion sickness, Wrex?"

"Fuck you, Williams."

"Commander," Joker's voice interrupted Ashley's retort, "Panoptes scans are picking up some strange readings two clicks from the DZ."

"How strange?" Shepard wanted to know, her voice had dropped its cheerfulness – she was all business now.

Joker wasn't all that helpful. " _Really_ strange," he said. "Like off the damn charts."

"Be careful, Commander," Pressly's voice said as Precious continued to bounce on the Colossus, taking a few of the geth troops with it. At least they were easier to smash than the Colossus. "The readings look like they're coming from the abandoned Prothean ruin just past the EAE mining camp."

Inside the Mako, Shepard nodded and adjusted the thrusters to take them just a little higher. "Acknowledged." _Precious_ hit the Colossus in a final teeth-jarring slam and the AI leviathan finally stopped moving. "Wrex, start shooting."

The krogan's laugh was temporarily drowned out by _Precious'_ canon.


	34. Adventures in Babysitting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Please suspend your disbelief. 1) In case it wasn't clear last chapter: Liberties taken with the layout of Therum. 2) I'm treating Liara's dig site like a "regular" cave since I've never been in a cave that is near a volcano (not sure about the transfer of heat through rock) and there's no lava seen to warm the interior of the cave. 3) Decided, after all, to split this chapter in two._
> 
> _**And also:** Thanks for reading, guys. You all are awesome.  
> _

Operations Chief Han Vasiliadis towered over most of the CIC crew. He, like the majority of the crew at their watch stations, had stripped down to his Alliance issue undershirt and the lightest pair of BDUs owned. And even that wasn't enough to cool off. Sweat dripped off the tip of his crooked nose if he bent forward to look at readouts.

"We're within three clicks of the colony," he reported.

Pressly nodded, making a note on his datapad. "Geth activity?" he asked.

Vasiliadis shrugged. "Can't be certain, sir," he replied, blotted his forehead with a sweat-dampened rag. "We're hidden for now, blending in with the background heat, but actively scanning the area will give us up. There are scattered geth comm signals, but they could be coming from anywhere."

"Still no activity from the colony?"

The CMC looked disturbed. "No, sir. Passive scans haven't picked up much more than static from the local radio stations. No other radio signals. No comm signals."

Pressly nodded again. "Damn it."

"We could send out a team of marines, sir," Joker suggested from the helm.

"No," Pressly said casting his gaze towards the helmsman. "We're already sitting ducks. I'm not wasting any more lives than necessary on this mission." He flicked the comm switch. "Give me some good news, Greg."

Chief Adams voice filled the speakers. "How about mediocre?"

Pressly rolled his eyes, gave gruff grumble. "What's the status?"

"Twenty-five minutes, and we'll be able to breathe normally. The air conditioning will be able to cool the air again. Recommend dry-dock immediately afterwards. Geth war and evil Spectre aside, we've got to replace the Solaris modules and a hell of a lot of wiring." A muffled feminine voice sounded, but the comm didn't pick up the words. "No, the Alliance has the resources that the Flotilla doesn't, Tali. Better to replace it out-right as soon as we can."

"Have you found the source of the problem?" Pressly questioned. He regretted the question as soon as it left his mouth, knowing the Chief Engineer well enough to know that he was about to spout a whole mouthful of tech. "Bottom line," Pressly amended just as Stan was elaborating on the intricacies of what sounded like an electrical problem.

"Faulty Solaris module within the starboard IES," Adams finished in a grumble.

Pressly gave a sigh. "Can anything else go wrong with this mission?"

* * *

"I think we're good, Commander," Ashley announced as she, Alenko and Vakarian searched the mining site for other targets. Ash would have double-checked her HUD for mass effect generator signatures, but whatever energy spike the Panoptes sensor network had picked up was playing havoc with her hardsuit's sensor suite. She'd had to shut the sensor suite down for the time being to keep it from continuously blipping distracting systems error messages onto her retina.

They had traversed the caldera from one end to the other, and this was the point where the geth seemed to be concentrated, but, without sensors, they couldn't be sure. They could only check out the mine.

A standard Grizzly without armaments sat burning a short distance away. There weren't any bodies besides the geth – and Ash didn't count the geth as having bodies. In her mind, only organics had bodies.

The Commander and Wrex got out of _Precious_ and made their way over; neither holstered their weapons as they, too, looked for stragglers. This was worse than a signal jam. At least with a signal jam, they could rest easy once they got the jammer. But in this situation, they had no way of knowing if something was going to pop out and hit them.

Ashley swallowed, images of the 212 and the massacre on Eden Prime coming to the forefront of her thoughts. _Not now. Not now. Not now. Please, not now._

"I think my eyes are going to dry out and fall out of my head," Alenko announced suddenly as he took point. He headed for the ramp to the mining shaft. A holographic sign flickered there.

"Yeah," Vakarian agreed. "I thought Palaven was hot."

Ash chuckled, caught off guard by the absurdity of the statements, but she continued to keep her vigil. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was adrenaline. Or maybe it was the fact that Shepard had used the Mako to smash a geth Colossus and there had been fifty geth between the squad and the mine shaft where they assumed Benezia was trying to extract her daughter.

* * *

The entrance to the mineshaft marked with the flickering holographic words "Akrotiri Valley Archeological Survey, University of Thessia" was, so far, merely a long tunnel with dim lighting. The tunnel's incline was steep, 45 degrees or maybe a little less. It was difficult to judge as he traversed, the sound of his and the squad's boots echoing against the curvature of the walls and ceiling.

Kaidan wasn't expecting the sudden drop in temperature as they entered. The sudden cooling of his face brought on a sneeze. Then another.

Everyone jumped.

Garrus was the first to say something. "Is Alenko seizing?"

Williams shook her head. "Didn't get around humans much in C-Sec, did you?"

"Just a sneeze, Garrus," Shepard explained, looking pointedly at Williams who backed down a bit. "Nothing to be concerned about." She gazed at Kaidan eyebrow raised. "Right?"

"The air is cooler in here than it is out there," Kaidan supplied.

"Of course it is," Wrex said. "It's a _cave_. I don't see any sunlight to heat up anything. Do you?"

Kaidan blinked at Wrex's sudden animosity. "Ah, no," he said. "It must be taking a vacation."

"I don't think I've ever seen a human sneeze before," Garrus stated drawing Wrex's attention.

"Don't wet yourself, kid," he grunted and pushed past Kaidan to take point.

Garrus' mandibles flared, his body language rigid. "I'm not –" he began but Shepard cut him off.

"Enough," she ordered. "Both of you. Straighten up, and toe the line. You're both behaving like children."

"Krogan children can fight right after birth," Garrus stated earning him a baleful glare from the Commander. The comment stopped Wrex in his tracks. He spun around.

_Damn it._

Kaidan was now standing between a pissed-off krogan battlemaster and an immature turian hothead. Today had gone from bad to worse to worst in a matter of hours. The only good thing about this day was the fact that his migraine meds seemed to be working and he was pleasantly numb from the brain down. _One point for Team Alenko._

"Is that what kids are taught these days?" Wrex rumbled. He sounded like a mixture of confused, pissed off and amused.

 _Never confuse a krogan_ , someone had once told Kaidan, _it pisses them off_. Kaidan had long since forgotten who had given him that advice. He regretted remembering it while standing between Wrex and Garrus in the middle an op. In a _cave_.

"I said _enough_ ," Shepard barged past Kaidan to confront Wrex. "We don't have time for this. Our position is compromised." She indicated the mineshaft's entrance with her thumb. "Four dreadnaughts in the system and you really think that's all the geth we'll see?"

As if on cue, a squad of geth opened fire on their position.


	35. Belly of the Beast

It's a surreal feeling when faced with life or death. It's a _reaction_. You don't _think_. You don't _act_. Action requires thinking. The act, in this case a rocket from a geth rocket drone, had already happened.

And so, Kaidan didn't think; he just _reacted_ as he pushed Shepard to the deck, the alien rocket soaring over them. The heat of the rocket's impact behind them was tangible against the coolness of the mine. Ears ringing from the explosion, only just muffled enough by his helmet not to deafen him, he rolled off the commander and surged to his feet, yanking her up and behind him reflexively. How he had managed to hang on to his weapon and get a few shots out at the enemy would puzzle him later.

That was five seconds. In the next two, rock tumbled, and Shepard pushed against his back urging him forward, towards the barrage of weapons fire. They broke into a run to avoid falling rocks as the entrance caved in. Pebbles and rubble glanced off their helmeted heads and armored shoulders. He half-expected Shepard to order them to get on the bounce, but she was silent save her breathing. Her pistol was doing the talking for her as she wildly fired on the geth.

A large chunk of rocky wall smashed into his shoulder, causing him to stumble, completely miss his target and nearly tripped up the Commander, who was right on his ass. To his left, Wrex swore as they ran, the guttural sound of a krogan dialect lost to Kaidan's translator. He got the idea.

The krogan swung his arms out in a mnemonic Kaidan had never seen before. A biotic barrier flared to life around them, encasing them like a bubble as debris rained down. A particularly large chunk of the rocky ceiling bounced off the shield where it would have hit Williams.

 _Nice save_ , Kaidan thought absently.

"You're going to have to teach me how to do that, Wrex," Shepard commented.

"Asari technique," Wrex grunted. "Ask the doctor when we get her." He pushed the shield through the fallen rocks forcing them out of the way. The tunnel ended at a narrow catwalk, the rocket drone and six geth troopers.

The geth didn't let up just because there was a barrier. Geth slugs ricocheted. The red drone fired another rocket. It burst against Wrex's shield, bright and smoky. Kaidan screwed his eyes shut against the light, throwing his arm up out of reflex, spots appearing in his vision when he opened them again. He expected to smell smoke and charred flesh, but the shield held and even muffled the sound.

"Let's move," the krogan said. His stance was irregular, like he was about to keel over. "You owe me another amp, Shepard."

"Garrus, when Wrex lowers the barrier overload that drone," Shepard ordered. "Alenko, push those bastards over the railing. Williams, suppressive fire." She switched from her pistol to her HWMSG, loading a mortar round into the chamber beneath the shot gun's barrel. She took point in front of Wrex as he wavered and the barrier gave out. Wrex sank to his knees, out of the fight, and the marines tightened their ranks.

Garrus' ECM hit its mark, a shower of green and blue wreaking havoc on the drone's shields and mass effect generator.

Kaidan nudged Williams, pointing to a small tank near the most geth. "Williams, take out that cryotank."

Three slugs later, the tank exploded taking out the geth's footing. The remaining geth disappeared without the catwalk below them and rock raining on top of them.

"All targets down," Kaidan said, his ears ringing. "Let's not do that again."

Shepard snorted as she collapsed her shotgun and attached it to the slot on the back of her armor. She looked at Wrex with some concern, but her tone was teasing, light. "Why not? No harm. No foul."

Despite himself, Kaidan felt a grin stretch his lips.

* * *

"Get off me, human."

Krogan or not, honor or not, Kaidan wasn't taking "No" for an answer and scowled at Wrex. "I have an extra amp," he said, taking the cylinder out of his medkit and holding it out to the krogan. He'd purchased an extra at the last stopover in case Shepard overloaded hers again. Biotic amplifier feedback wasn't anything to sneeze at. Kaidan wouldn't soon forget almost losing Shepard on Feros. "Would you rather have your brain –"

Wrex surged up, towering over Kaidan. _Shit._ The biotic did not want to fight a damned krogan with a boo-boo. "This isn't Feros," Wrex grunted. "And I'm not a squishy human." His red eyes pierced the distance between them, the black slits of the pupils dilated in the dim light of the cavern. "There's a reason I'm a Battlemaster, human. The damage is repaired but the amp's gone." He yanked the dead amp out and tossed it down. It hit the catwalk with a _tink_ then was gone, lost to the stone far below. Wrex snatched the extra from Kaidan's hand and shoved it in the slot at the base of his skull before stalking off and taking point.

Kaidan met Williams' eyes and she shook her head.

* * *

"Move out," Shepard said as soon as Wrex took point. "Let's find the scientist and get the hell out of here. I've had just about all I can take of this planet."

She swallowed. They were at least five hundred meters under Therum's surface. _Without a way to get back out again._

It wasn't so much her reaction to being trapped but the fact that they were in a goddamned _cave_. It unnerved her, reminded her of the caves she explored as a child on Mindoir. She swallowed again, her mind racing back. Her father had called the creatures in the caves "bats" but they didn't look like the bats from her earth biology studies. _I am not Batman_ , she reminded herself, a personal joke from childhood to ward off the fear of the "bats".

* * *

"You think there's another entrance, Skipper?" Ashley asked as they made their way across the catwalk over the chasm, Wrex at point and Garrus bringing up the rear. Some kind of blue barrier loomed in front of them and it only got bigger as they approached it.

Shepard nodded. "This is an archeological dig site. It would be stupid not to."

Alenko looked back. "Not all scientists are engineers, ma'am."

Shepard made a face. "Way to boost morale, Lieutenant."

Williams nudged Kaidan before he could say anything further. "Dare you spit over the edge."

The Commander chuckled. "A challenge has been issued," she said, mirth evident in her voice.

Kaidan hesitated. "I'll pass, Chief. Mine's bigger anyway. And we've got," he thumped the thick, blue barrier that prevented them from going any further, "bigger issues."

Shepard put a hand on the barrier, her face withdrawn. "More working Prothean technology," she murmured. She looked as if she wanted to say more, but dropped her hand and looked back at them with an unreadable expression on her face. She indicated an elevator at the back of the cavern. "Let's see where that leads."

Kaidan gave a nod, indicating the area beyond the barrier. "Those tiles remind me of a bathroom floor."

Williams rolled her eyes. "Thanks a lot, LT. Now, I've gotta pee."

"Yeah, my eyeballs are floating, too, Williams." Kaidan clapped her on the shoulder then followed Shepard further into the cavern.


	36. Lair of the Archeologist

Dr. T'Soni laughed sounding wild and slightly deranged. Shepard wondered how long the asari had been trapped. Alenko's omni-tool couldn't get a reading past the repulsion field barring their way to the trapped alien.

"I'd say she's in shock, Commander," he told her after frowning down at the holographic interface as it lit up red against the golden-orange. 'Negative Readings' reflected backwards against his visor, on his face and his day-old stubble. "At least that field she's stuck in is keeping her upright."

"Brain trauma?" Shepard questioned, casting her gaze in his direction as he powered down his omni-tool.

He nodded. "Possibly."

The doctor began singing loudly and off-key startling them all. Garrus edged closer to get a better look.

"Probably," the turian said, gave a tap on the field. The rippling mass effect current changed from blue to violet and back again. He gave a little chitter that didn't pick up on the translators. Shepard knew Garrus well enough to know that the sound was equal to a shocked oath, but she didn't know which turian language it was. It would have been interesting to hear the galactic version.

"Great," Williams muttered, shaking her head in disgust, "a crazy alien. Like we don't have any other problems."

Shepard snorted at Ashley's comment knowing that she wouldn't be able to change the Chief's views on aliens overnight.

Wrex, however, guffawed. "Williams, the crazy ones lead us to the best fights." He nudged the marine playfully with his elbow – which was more or less the equivalent of being knocked down by an aircar. When the much smaller Chief stumbled, Alenko caught her elbow before she could go down completely, and they ended up in an awkward embrace of sorts, the ceramic of their armor clacking together, as both marines tried to get their footings in the same spot at the same time.

Shepard had to look away when they stared at each other a moment longer than was probably necessary, a slight catch in her chest at the thought of their closeness. _Damn._

 _And not my business_ , she decided, taking a deep breath and looked at but not really seeing the repulsion field in front of her.

They were perfectly capable, professional marines.

_Not my business._

Who they saw on their own time was their own business, and she'd made the rules clear as diamond dust aero-gel.

_Not my business._

No fucking on the ship.

_Definitely none of my damn business._

Irritated at her own inability to read her people and feeling foolish for even thinking Alenko had anything other than professional interest in her – _Was it all in my head?_ – she studied Dr. T'Soni and the repulsion field surrounding her.

The field was nearly as blue as the asari's skin so it gave the appearance of a floating uniform with disembodied eyes. All Shepard could make out were the whites – a subtle difference of blue against blue.

There was a darker blue that didn't blend with the field's undulating color that defined one side of the doctor's face and stained her neck and her tunic. Squinting, Shepard noted that it was blood from a cut above T'Soni's brow.

 _Benezia's daughter could have roughed herself up_. The Commander wanted to believe the doctor's story about not speaking with her mother for years.

Shepard's odd-colored eyes travelled once again to the repulsion field. Barrier curtain. Alori'we'I'k make. _Wait. How the hell_ – _Cypher_ , Shepard reminded herself. The thought made her shudder involuntarily, and she cast her eyes around the cavern looking for a solution to get T'Soni out of there.

This had once been a place of worship. _No, a commune._ A vague sense of wrongness hit Shepard. As a culture, the Protheans had looked down on this place. Associating it with a cult alleviated some of the doubt, but the Protheans were so alien to her that even that association made her uneasy.

The cavern was massive, fallen debris and rocks from the top littered the floor. There were no stalactites or stalagmites. No water. The thought worried Shepard. No water could mean they might not be able to get out. She set that thought aside as quickly as she could. There was no damn way she was dying in a cave on a planet in the Terminus. _Hell no._

"Oh, _Goddess_ ," T'Soni wailed drawing Shepard out of her thoughts, the asari's voice wavering between madness and despair, "I'm going to die in here!" She tugged against the field holding her. "Please!" she begged. "I need help!"

Looking at the ceiling as though it held answers, she laughed again. "Wonderful, Liara, you're talking to yourself. If you weren't crazy before for coming on this expedition alone, you certainly are now."

"Calm down," Shepard said, holding up a hand and stepping closer to the field. "We'll find a way to get you out of there."

T'Soni slumped against the restraining field. "Of course," she replied. "What good is a hallucination if it can't offer false hope?" She looked away and then met Shepard's gaze. "If you're real, please get me out, but be careful," she warned. "There is a krogan with the geth."

"Lady, there's a krogan with the humans," Wrex replied. His gruff voice echoed off the cavern's walls.

"So there is," the doctor agreed. She said nothing more, shutting her eyes as though she were in pain or very tired. Shepard didn't associate enough with aliens to know asari mannerisms. She could have been meditating for all she knew.

"Well, this is going to be an interesting endeavor," Shepard quipped. She opened a channel to the _Normandy_. " _Normandy_ , target sighted but not acquired. What's your status?"

Joker's voice filled their ears. "Goddamn, it's hot in here."

"Temperatures are returning to optimal operation, Commander," Pressly's voice answered. His tone was gruff, like he was either contemplating Joker's Captain's Mast or his bludgeoning. "We'll need another thirty minutes to cool everything down or risk overheating again. The long and short of it: It's broken and needs repairs."

"Getting out of the system may get a little tricky," Joker added. "We aren't going to be able to cloak. She's fast enough once we clear atmo, but getting there is gonna suck for a few."

"There aren't any signals or comm traffic from the colony," Pressly continued. "Just like Eden Prime and Feros. We haven't sent out scouts."

"We don't have the man- or fire-power," Shepard agreed. "Be ready. Dr. T'Soni appears to have sustained head trauma. Have Dr. Chakwas and her trauma team on standby."

"Aye aye."

"Commander," Alenko said, pointing to the large piece of equipment squatting on the cavern's floor. "That's a mining laser."

"Drill through to the other side?" she guessed.

He nodded as they left Wrex and Garrus to watch the doctor, heading for the ramp at the end of the catwalk. The three humans did not see Wrex shove Garrus out of the way and follow.

* * *

The Prothean barrier disrupted the HUDs. Kaidan didn't see the geth until a sniper round tagged Shepard in the shoulder. She went down with a yelp. Then the AIs were all over them, swarming, shooting, and squawking in snapping click-hisses.

"Shepard's hit!" Garrus said as they hit the deck and immediately scattered for cover. He let fly an ECM then cursed when it struck geth and the mining laser.

"Hit but not out. Find cover!" Shepard shouted. Her left arm hung limply at her side; red blood splattered against the cracked green ceramic plates of her shoulder, against her helmet and visor.

"Fire in the hole!" She lobed a grenade with her good arm, and, using her biotics, propelled it past the mining laser and near the feet of two snipers. It exploded in flash of light, smoke and heat, incinerating the geth with its thermal paste.

The other geth didn't appear affected by the burst and continued their advance, shotguns and rifles at the ready, firing away and ejecting heat sink after heat sink. Kaidan's pistol was already glowing with heat.

Kaidan was closest to her. "How bad?" he asked as he leaned back into the paltry cover he'd scavenged while his gun cooled.

She made a face beneath her gore-splattered visor. "Synth skin is the worst skin," she complained as she rolled to her feet and took cover with Garrus behind a downed piece of catwalk from the upper level.

"Could be worse," Kaidan replied. Gun cooled, he fired a few shots at the nearest target as the pistol's targeting computer fed the information to his HUD. Even with the barrier's interference, he was able to make the shots count. Two machines lost their arms.

"What's worse than slimy medi-gel under your armor?" Williams questioned as she groped for better cover.

"Molten omni-gel under your armor," Kaidan replied. He executed a mnemonic, igniting his nervous system. He gave a forceful shove foregoing any fear of hurting anyone. Kaidan only had Line of Sight on the enemy. The force of energy hit the geth swarming them and hurled the machines away; they clattered into each other, limbs crashing into limbs, sparks flying.

"Do I want to know?" Shepard asked, her voice strained from pain and lack of mobility in her injured arm.

He grinned, remembering the incident fondly. He was glad it never happened again though. "Ask me again sometime."

She grunted. "I'm gonna know everything about you, Lieutenant."

He laughed. "Yeah, well. One day at a time, right?"

She grinned, levitating a large boulder and dropping it over two geth. _Creative_.

"Biotic competition?" he asked, eyebrow lifted.

The Commander laughed. "We'll determine who's got the biggest one day, Lieutenant."

"Looking forward to it, Commander."

The battle ended just as fast as it began.

"These were less coordinated than that first group," Shepard mused after they had taken out the last geth within visual range. She, Williams and Kaidan made their way down the ramp to the mining laser as Wrex and Garrus searched for stragglers.

"Don't geth get more intelligent as their groups increase in number?" Kaidan asked as he held up his hand and looked pointed at Shepard's shoulder.

"Tali's explanation was just a bit over my head," the commander stated. She pointed to the laser with her good hand. "You can dress the wound once we get that thing operational."

Kaidan disagreed but nodded anyway. "Yes, ma'am." If he could convince the Commander to hotwire it, then maybe he would get the opportunity to do a med-interface with her hardsuit.

The mining laser was a thick hunk of metal with an inverted cone on the end. A ladderwell was connected to the side with a perch large enough for three people, four turians, or two krogans to stand side by side. The cockpit itself was recessed into the top with three consoles of aero-gel displays that didn't require haptic interface mods under the skin of the fingertips.

Kaidan whistled appreciatively when he reached the perch and removed his helmet to get a better look without the flare of an inoperable HUD on the backside of his visor getting in the way. High-end. Not some civvie bullshit. Hacking would be a nightmare. _God, what fun!_ But they were on a timeline, and he had to address Shepard's injury – whether the Commander liked it or not.

"Problems?" Shepard asked as Williams gave her hand up to the perch. Kaidan hadn't realized they had followed him up.

The Commander had her calculating look on – like he was a specimen to be studied, a thing that could be picked apart. Normally, it didn't bother him, but he suddenly felt like a ten year old getting caught for sneaking out of his parents' house to experience the late-late stimulcast of the newest Golden Orbit stim.

Ducking his head, he admitted sheepishly, "I, ah, I wish I had time enough to go through the systems." _On a damn mining laser. Underground. In the middle of a fucked up op._

_On top of a massive volcano that was set to blow any day._

_Maybe any minute._

_Brilliant plan, Alenko._

Sobered with those thoughts, he cleared his throat, stepped down into the cockpit and kneeled at the nearest control panel, setting his helmet at his side. The HUD wouldn't help him. His omni-tool would be imperative, especially since Garrus' ECM had caught the laser in a shower of sparks. He hoped the machine wasn't too damaged; otherwise they would have to dig with their rifles or something. Or wait until the volcano blew their asses sky-high.

Pulling off the panel, he nearly drooled at the wiring. _Hello, beautiful._

Blue-, red-, yellow-, and green-encased wires were bundled neatly in rows along the edge feeding into the mother board. They connected the mother board to inverters that powered the aero-gel displays, hard drives and memory cards. White and black flat ribbon cables connected the mother to the drives and cards.

"You're not seriously considering slapping omni-gel on that, are you?"

Shepard's tone reminded him of his mother back before Conatix had come into their lives. His father had tried to wear something casual to a fancy dinner party. The memory stirred something in his chest, and he set it aside with easy laughter.

"Orders, Commander?" he asked in lieu of an inappropriate comment.

"How long will it take to hack?"

He shrugged, pulled a pack of green wire loose. "First, I have to repair the damage the electromagnetic cartridge inflicted." He showed the Commander the burned, frayed wires, the melted green casings. "Depending on the damage," he cocked his head to the side, peering in. The mother board looked relatively unscathed. "We should be able to get the doctor by the time the _Normandy_ is space-worthy again. Might even be able to use this to get us out of here." He hooked his thumb to the back of the cavern.

Shepard nodded. "Carry on, Alenko."

Kaidan held out a vial of omni-gel. "Care to do the honors, ma'am, while I have a look at that wound?"

Her lips quirked mischievously, and his heart did a little somersault in his chest. As she took it from his hand, he suddenly wondered if she had plans to dump it in his hair. He hoped not. Omni-gel was a bitch to get out, and it was capable of burning a few layers of skin off before it cooled to sticky, gelatinous goo.

He moved aside as she knelt down; the subtle clink of the ceramic of their armors as her leg brushed against his made him swallow, and he forced control. Underground and on top of a volcano. Possibly trapped underground. With geth and a krogan.

He booted up his omni-tool and interfaced with Shepard's medical suite. He blinked, looking sharply at the Commander. She had quite a cocktail in her system.

"Uh, Commander," he began, unsure how to broach the subject. He'd had his fair share of this conversation with marines under his command. Most had been fresh out of boot.

But this was some serious shit for some serious pain. And Dr. Chakwas had personally signed off on the order. He swallowed wondering what the hell kind of ops she'd been on in order for Dr. Chakwas to even consider adding it to her suite. He also wondered if the doctor had confused his medical suite for hers, but quickly decided against that. The _Normandy_ 's chief medical officer had gotten the position because she was damn good at what she did; a perfectionist to the core.

"Adjust as necessary," Shepard replied, saving him the trouble of going through the spiel best said to a recruit. She didn't look up as she brushed omni-gel carefully over the wiring, the smell of burning plastic accosting their noses. "Just don't expect Georgette to be very helpful in the next fire fight."

"Georgette?"

She reached behind her with her good arm and patted the Spectre-issued shotgun attached to the small of her back.

"You named your shotgun?" Garrus asked. Kaidan looked up and saw the turian and Wrex on the perch. Wrex wore a grin, and Garrus looked completely flummoxed.

"Why not?" Shepard asked. "Closest thing to giving birth."

Kaidan was swamped with images of Shepard holding a child and quickly put the thought aside by asking, "How's that, ma'am?"

She shook her head as she added another globule of omni-gel to the wiring and brushed it on. "Cost enough to pay the doctor bills, purchase new furniture and put the kid through a semester of private school on Bekenstein."

"Should I ask how you know that?"

"Anderson."

"Oh."


	37. Open Sesame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the Mass Effect Community on LiveJournal with regards to the Cipher. They gave me plenty of food for thought, and, thus, this chapter transformed from less than a paragraph into four pages.
> 
> Also: Grow, Love Polygon, grow!
> 
> wait.

“Oh.” Her mouth was dry as dust.  If only she could get some water.

Her stomach churned; her temples pounded, thunderous.

_Thunder?_

Her eyelids were heavy. She hung her head and closed them briefly blocking the unnatural blue before her. She smelled ozone, sulfur and mass accelerator vapor.

_I don’t feel rain._

She didn’t know why there would be sulfur and mass accelerator vapor in the air. Memories drifted in and out, ghostly wisps, intangible. She was… floating?

“Where?” The word tumbled from her parched lips, lost in a slur.

  _Kinetic barrier inside the main structure._ The barrier curtain thrummed in time with her pulse. Or maybe her pulse thrummed in time with the barrier’s output.

Structure. What structure? The Akrotiri dig site. Therum! Memories soared to the surface of her mind’s eye, clear and bright.

She scoffed. _Humans. Here. What a vivid imagination… They never ventured here before. The humans always stay at camp._

 “Dr. T’Soni.”

 _They – they never…_ She was having difficulty holding her eyes open.

“Dr. T’Soni.”

“My nose itches,” she complained, blinking way the fog. It wasn’t like anyone was around for her to complain to. “Dull stone,” she reminded herself. The tickle started at her left nostril. If only she could reach it. But she couldn’t because she’d hit something wrong and there were geth and they were going to get through and take her to Saren.  Why did Saren want her?  She didn’t know anything about geth.  She was just an archeologist.

“Dr. T’Soni.”

“Stop calling my name,” she groused, angered with the trick of her mind; angered that she could not have water and could not scratch her damn nose. It was hers to scratch, and she couldn’t! “You aren’t real. You are only bothering me.” Tears prickled her eyes as anger gave way to despair. “I’m going to die here.”

“Easy, doctor.”

Her breath caught in her throat, her heart jolting in her chest. That… wasn’t the same feminine voice as before. That was… It was a male voice. Why would she imagine a male voice? She turned her head as best should could. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of something.

Red armor, large, rept—

“ _Krogan_!” Heart in her throat, filled with terror, she struggled against the field holding her. “No!”

  _How did they get in? How did they get past the curtains?_ She thought she was safe! _Goddess, no!  Nononono!_

The krogan guffawed and stepped out of view. Terror surged through her, adrenaline renewing her energy.  Her nervous system ignited, dark energy danced across her skin, but the field held her still.

“Someone help! _Please_!”

“Easy, doctor.”

She looked down. There _was_ a human – _a male_! “You’re not geth.”

The play of lines around the human’s dark-colored eyes was intriguing as well as – _Goddess, what thick brow hair. Eyebrows,_ she corrected herself _. Humans call them eyebrows._

“No, ma’am,” the human said, and his full lips caught Liara’s attention or rather the stubble surrounding them caught her attention. _Hair is so… odd._  “Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, System Alliance Marines.”

_Bwah?_

Belatedly, Liara realized she had spoken.  The staff lieutenant smiled. At least, she thought it was a smile. He bared his straight, white teeth. Whenever some species bared their teeth it was an act of aggression.  She tried to remember what it meant with regards to humans.

“There’s a krogan,” she told him, frantically looking around for it. It was still out of view. _Goddess, please let me out of here._

He nodded. _Was… was that an affirmative?_ “Yes, ma’am.”

“Here?”

His dark eyes shifted away, looking behind her. She shook, frightened. She didn’t want the krogan to kill her. She didn’t want the geth to take her away. “There’s one here, Dr. T’Soni.”

“It wants to take me to Saren!” She struggled against the field again. Her body was sore, her arms ached. She tried to generate a mass effect field big enough to stop it. This had to be a mercenary group or… or the humans were using the geth to their dirty ends. They were bullies, after all.  They just came into the galaxy and started taking things. It would—

“No, ma’am.” The staff lieutenant was calm, steady. “Just take it easy.  We’re here to get you out.”

Liara swallowed, relinquishing the field. It hadn’t done much, only made her skin shimmer.  

She looked at the human with narrowed eyes. Just because she was young didn’t mean she was born yesterday. Perhaps, perhaps should talk her way out of this.  _Right, Liara. Like you brilliantly talked yourself out of litigation with the hanar zealots._

“The krogan, Urdnot Wrex, is on our side,” the human continued. “We’re following leads on Saren. Investigating what he’s up to. You know about the geth attack on one of our colonies?” News? He expected her to follow the news? She only had two weeks to prove this dig site had clues to the disappearance of the Protheans. _Fffsh._ _News._ He made a gesture with his head. “Commander?”

Another armored human stepped into view.  This one was a little shorter than the staff lieutenant. Liara could only see the helmet, which was green and black with strange patterns. It was scored in places, and droplets of red wax splattered the face plate. The human looked up at her, and Liara’s breath caught. She’d never seen a human with such eyes – copper but with flecks of green and gold. Like a _var’dant_ gemstone.

“I’m Commander Shepard.” It was the same voice as before—the one who called Liara’s name. “Citadel Department of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance.”

Liara’s jaw dropped. A Spectre? A _human_ Spectre?

 _Oh, Goddess._ “Now I know I’m going crazy.”

Shepard’s pale lips parted, and she bared her teeth, her round eyes tilting at the end. The commander’s smile was more pleasant than the watching the staff lieutenant bare his teeth. Maybe it was the hair.  Hair was so… _alien_.

“Tell me how to deactivate the field,” she said. “When you’re free, then maybe we can discuss how crazy you are.”

Liara frowned at her. “You’re rude for a hallucination.”

“Yeah, well, you’re trapped in some kind of Prothean field.” Shepard pointed to the barrier curtain in front of them. “Geth are that way, and there’s a cave-in.” She pointed behind them. “I’m hoping that’s the exit. We’re on a timeline, Dr. T’Soni. I don’t do well at button mashing.”

“Yeah,” another voice – female this time – supplied from behind them. “Things tend to explode.”

Liara swallowed, closed her eyes to visualize the controls.  The haptic interface of Prothean constructs was difficult to explain to someone who knew nothing about them. They were different from modern interfaces. She was certain that the human wouldn’t understand the access code sequence.  Not many did. Scholars had trouble some times. Modern tech had been simplified for everyday usage of more than a dozen difference species and languages. Then translators simplified and codified it into the galactic standard.

“Dr. T’Soni.” Shepard’s voice shook Liara out of her contemplation.  “I need to know if it takes a standard _s’loric_ or if there’s anything else I need to do.”

 _S’loric?_ Liara’s eyes shot open, and she looked at Shepard in awe.  She knew! She _understood_. Very few scholars understood. Liara had been trying to tell them for _years_.

But this _human_ did.

Liara studied her. The commander’s expression pulled taut the scar that ran perpendicular to her left eye and scored her pale-brown eyebrow.  Liara found herself wanting to know the story of that scar. How had she gotten it? There were others on the lips and under the right eye. She wanted to know more about this human. Who was she?

“Standard,” Liara said, and, as Shepard stepped out of her line of sight, Liara wanted to cry.  She knew why Shepard understood, why there was an attraction. _Because I’m imagining her. She isn’t real. I’m trapped in here._

“Alenko, Garrus.” Shepard’s tone was different. Now Liara knew why her mind had called her _Commander_.  It was like there were two humans sharing a body – one kind and gentle, the other abrasive and commanding. “Catch her when I turn off the field.”

“Be careful, Commander. That looks ancient.”  Liara looked to her right in surprise. A turian? She peered at him, not recognizing the colonial markings across his nasal cavity and face plates. Turians had _so many_ colonies. Why would she imagine one that she didn’t know?

“Fifty thousand years,” Shepard replied absently, and Liara tried to shift to see her imaginary savior.

“What was that word you used, Commander?” the staff lieutenant asked as he moved closer to Liara’s left. “The translator didn’t pick it up.”

“It’s a sequence of keystrokes,” Shepard told him. “Basically: ‘Open Sesame.’”

With that, the field melted away, and Liara plummeted with a scream into the staff lieutenant’s arms.


	38. Blow

The bridge was still damned hot even though the sensor read-outs said the _Normandy_ had returned to optimal temperatures. _Optimal for turians maybe_ , Joker thought, irritated. He’d long since put his hat in his lap and gotten rid of his shirt, but at least his hair was no longer dripping with perspiration.  His armpits felt disgusting, his hair was stuck to his head, his crotch itched, and his BDUs were still partially moist from sweating so much. He felt like someone had dipped him in sugar water and let him air dry. The sticky sensation just wouldn’t go away. Or the smell.  At least _everyone_ _else_ smelled, too.  A bunch of malodorous humans were almost as bad as a pack of elcor having a conversation. Were it just him, he would have made a bee-line for the showers, Vrolik’s syndrome be damned.I _can_ smell _me._ It was fucking embarrassing.

 _God, I need to bathe._

And that would be just, oh, so fun. The idea of slipping on slick tile, breaking a bone and puncturing a lung or something made him shudder involuntarily.

His fingers glided over the bridge controls. “Betty, interface with Engineering.” Yet another window opened.

Its designation was actually Normandy Virtual Intelligence Suite and the turian designers hadn’t bothered to give it an acronym.  _Fuckers._   Just as soon as the thing had started talking to him in dry-dock, Joker had nicknamed it Betty Bitchbox.  The name stuck. No one had told him that the VI was programmed with an initial voice designation override prior to sitting his ass at the helmsman’s station. _Oops._ The turian engineers in dry-dock had been ever so _overjoyed_. He had especially loved it when the head engineer and lead designer of the system had warbled and hissed curses in his direction. How was he supposed to know it would take all but an act of God to reprogram the thing once overridden? _Engineering marvel, my ass._

“Interface established,” the VI said.  Its female voice was designed to be soothing.  Humans responded better to the female voice (something about moms and shit that Joker didn’t really give a rat’s ass about) rather than a male – much to the chagrin of the turian designers, whose society didn’t seem to be bothered by gender differences.  Of course, if the turian engineer had been any example of the female of the species, he didn’t want anything to do with them.  He had enough problems with the females of his _own_ species.

 _Seriously. Say one damn thing wrong, and it’s all, “Oh my God, Joker. Oh my God, you’re such an ass. Like, I’m never talking to you again. Oh my God. Like, ew.” How the fuck was I supposed to know? I’m not a fucking mind reader. Jeezus._

For a human-turian joint venture, Joker took great pleasure knowing that the thing spoke with an asari accent.  No human speaking the standard human language, Frenglish, could imitate the asari accents – which didn’t bother him at all. Asari were all sexy and shit. They practically purred when they spoke, and their bodies… _damn.  All exotic and curvy. And blue. Mm._

That didn’t mean he hated the VI any less when he had to give the computer verbal commands.  He despised interacting with it, but he already had too many windows open running systems checks, calibrations, and diagnostics and was in the middle of a system override on the pitot-static system – _because that would be just_ awesome _were that system to fail as we climb through atmo_ —and he only had so many hands and fingers.

 _Like to see Munzarová, Teodros, or Kawabata do this shit. Watch the cripple multi-task and get shit done properly._

 _Fuckers._

He studied the image on the vid screen from Engineering in between rerouting a lost connection between the altimeter and pitot. The screen was dark, but it seemed to move indistinctly, like the cam was on but the feedback was in a loop or someone’s hand was covering the cam.

 _The hell? I’m in the middle of a fucking manual override! Can’t this piece of--_ “Betty, confirm interface.” He didn’t have time for this shit.

Tali’s voice overrode Betty’s.  “What can I do for you, Bridge?” Her voice sounded very far away. Or her head was trapped in a can. Her suit’s sound filters were usually better.  He blamed the cam and its mic.  There had to be something wrong with it. _Of course. Everything is going fucking wrong today. It’s “Let’s Piss Joker Off Day.”_

Tearing his eyes away from the read-outs, Joker cocked his head to the side studying the vid display. Were they having system failure on the comm down there? The image shifted again. Then it dawned on him. The cam was zoomed in on the quarian’s ass. His irritation and annoyance quickly dissolved. So many responses popped into his head, but he cleared his throat before any came out of his mouth. He ogled her a second or two with a grin on his face before answering her question.

“Please tell me you’re routing more cool air up here.”

“We’re doing the best we can, Joker,” she told him. Whatever she was doing caused her wiggle a little. It was all he could do to maintain a modicum of decency and not giggle like some kid watching a nudie stim for the first time.

The mouth plate on Tali’s mask filled the screen. “Keelah, I didn’t realize—“  The screen shifted as she fiddled with the controls.  The cam zoomed out.

“Better?” she asked as the screen zeroed in on her chest.

Joker blinked. “Much.”

Hendricks cleared her throat and Joker glanced at the red head.  Her glare was enough to peel paint right off the hull. _The hell is her problem?_

“Well,” he amended – not because Beck thought he was being a deviant; no, it was the decent thing to do—“only if you want us looking at your cleavage.”

“My, my what?” she squeaked.  The vid shifted again, tumultuous-like this time, before it zoomed out on Tali and the panel behind her. Wires leaked out behind her like the panel had a tummy ache and vomited them out in Engineering.

“Air,” Joker said. “It’s still too hot on the bridge. Are the air filters on? It stinks up here.”

“Joker, that’s the hair on your upper lip,” Hendricks told him none too sweetly.  He shot her a glare.

* * *

The doctor shrieked when the kinetic field dropped her – her thin arms flailing. Her gloved hand caught Garrus in the mouth as Kaidan reached out and grabbed her, his hands fitting easily around her lithe waist. Whether it was instinctual or not, she coiled her thin arms around his neck – were it not for his armor, he felt certain the asari would have choked him.

“You’re safe, Dr. T’Soni,” he assured, concerned about her head wound and the purple blood streaking the side of her face and knowing pressing up against a hard suit was uncomfortable as hell.  “I’ve got you.  You’re safe.”

Dr. T’Soni blinked, seemingly coming to her senses and he took a moment to marvel at her. Seeing one of the exotic aliens on a vid or even on the Citadel had been one thing – and, yeah, there were the odd issue of Fornax here and there – but to be _this_ close…

She had an earthy, musky scent that held a hint of sulfur and iron. Were he not just this side of overcoming his pain meds, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.  His sense of smell didn’t bother him unless he had a migraine or was on the verge of one.

Her skin was pale blue like someone had airbrushed the sky onto her.  What had he thought had been glitter on her full face and head were tiny iridescent scales that were denser on the folds of her scalp. There were darker blue-black scales across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks – like human freckles. Huh.  The scales formed two lines, like human eyebrows, across her brow.

Her eyes were the same blue of her skin, wild and bright with tears.

“You’re real!” she cried and hugged him harder. “By the Goddess, you’re real!”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Mining laser,” Shepard supplied. “We drilled through.”

Kaidan looked helplessly at the Commander. There was no real way to pry the doctor off without hurting her. Physics threshold mods weren’t for touching unarmored civilians.

Shepard’s eyebrow was raised, cooling disapproving.  Williams was scowling.  Kaidan doubted the doctor’s level of hysteria could be faked. They would have to wait and see first.

“Let me have a look at that wound, Dr. T’Soni,” he tried.  She pulled away quickly, her eyes darting to and fro.

“Wound?” She looked down at her hands, turning them over. They were small, willowy and encased in gloves. “But I’m not –“

“Do you know a way out of here?” Williams cut her off.

Dr. T’Soni nodded, blinked when she became disoriented. She took a step back and Kaidan put a hand as gently as he could on her arm. “There is an elevator back that way,” she said, steadied, pointed back the way they had come in with mining laser.  “At least, I think it’s an elevator.  I have never activated it.”

“One way to find out,” Shepard said, glance back and meeting the asari’s gaze. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

Shepard nodded. “Good. As the old vids say, ‘Let’s blow this joint.’”

A rumble echoed through the structure and cave system, shaking it at its core. They all ended up on the ground.

“I didn’t mean it literally,” Shepard complained as she surged back to her feet, a wince on her face from her injured shoulder.

The doctor looked around. “That laser either caused a seismic event or Santorini Mons just blew. That one was the worst one yet.”

“Join the Marines. Meet exotic aliens.” Ash quipped as they hurried toward the elevator. “Get blown up by random acts of God.”

“If I die in here, I’m killing you all,” Wrex grunted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betty Bitchbox – Taken from the aviator slang Bitchin Betty, which is the computer-generated female voice heard over the earpiece when something isn’t right. (Usually caused by unsafe flight conditions or an enemy threat.)


	39. Amorphophallus Titanium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Sorry this one’s so short guys, but Therum’s taking too damn long to get through. (The irony of my least favorite mission taking the longest to write is not lost on me.)_ _;-; THERUM, GO AWAY._
> 
>  
> 
> _There is one tiny unavoidable ME3 spoiler/speculation in this chapter regarding the VS and his/her blue armor in ME3._
> 
>  
> 
>  _(For the record, I love Ambassador Udina and the turian Councilor. Or rather, I love to hate them. Between the voice acting and the writing, they are awesome. They can piss me off like no other characters can, and pissing them off in return is_ fun and (mostly) hilarious _.)_

Captain David Anderson had to hand it to Ambassador Udina: When push came to shove, the ambassador had the most impressive ability to turn red-in-the-face David had ever seen.

And David had seen _a lot_ of red faces over the history of his career. Many had been his superiors. Most had been during awards ceremonies.

As it was, Ambassador Udina’s expression was scrunched into a scowl the likes of which David hadn’t beheld, the formidable wrinkles on the ambassador’s face taking a life all unto themselves.

Udina, who used his exhaustive vocabulary to cajole even the most obdurate politicians and diplomats, spluttered incoherently a moment – David thought the ambassador’s heart had finally given out, and he was baring witness to Donnel Udina’s demise – before all but lobbing the datapad at his desk and demanding, “Do you know the ramifications of this report?”

David’s nostrils flared. “Of course I know the ramifications.” He swiped the air with a hand before Udina could open his mouth again. “Shepard did everything right. She–”  

“Shepard _murdered_ one of her squad and _four_ _civilians_!” Udina paced the floor like a prowling tom cat while David gaped at the accusation. “Why wasn’t I told of this during vetting, Captain? Why is the Department of the Navy only now coming forward with this?”

“Internal Affairs isn’t only now coming forward with this. It happened after vetting and before the Terra Nova incident. Internal Affairs has only just reached its conclusions,” the Captain said. “It wasn’t murder, Ambassador. It was self-defense. Shepard is a hero. Always has been a hero. You just _read_ the damned report.”

“And damning it is!” The Ambassador slammed both hands on his desk. “She killed four civilians and her squad mate after the squad mate turned out to have been a graduate of the BAaT program! What about the biotic squad mate the crazy one replaced upon death? Did that one really die in combat or was that ‘friendly fire’? Shepard’s already got the reputation of being the only one left after a firefight and has been proven to be mentally instable. If this gets out—“

David cut him off. “I don’t like collateral damage any more than you, Ambassador, but Shepard defended herself, protected her squad and the rest of the civilians against a biotic terrorist that had infiltrated her squad.” The Captain shook his head ruefully. “A biotic that _we_ _assigned_ to her squad.” His eyes narrowed at the politician. “And what do you mean, ‘proven to be mentally unstable?’ What that woman faced on Akuze would mess with anyone’s head. She’s passed every eval the Alliance has thrown at her after her administrative leave.”

“’Collateral damage’?” Udina glared. “We might as well brand Shepard as the Butcher of Torfan.”

“You know as well as I do that Shepard wasn’t on the ground.”

“No, but her squad was. Cleaning up Scorpion shit was—”

David resisted the urge to yell instead digging his nails into the palm of his hand. “What does Torfan have to do–“

“I knew we should have let Lieutenant Alenko have the first Spectre nomination. Now we have a murderer and an unstable L3 biotic as our first human Spectre. The L3s are supposed to be more stable than the L2s!”

“Have you listened to anything I’ve said?” David wanted to know. The Ambassador resumed pacing, mumbling to himself, and it was all David could do to keep from throwing himself at Udina. Giving the ambassador a black eye would be so satisfying. “Besides that, Alenko’s still on the list. He’s one of the finest officers in the fleet and he’s a biotic.”

“If Nihlus hadn’t recommended Shepard, we could have gone with Rear Admiral Kahoku’s recommendations.”

David rolled his eyes, frustrated with this old argument. “You were the one who disagreed with Kahoku’s suggestion. ‘L2s aren’t stable,’ you said. Alenko is one of the very few that happen to be stable. Even without Nihlus’ backing, it would have been good for—”

“The Subcommittee for Transhuman Studies should have known about this incident before they went into session!” Udina declared before throwing himself into his overstuffed chair and propping his head in both hands.

“Shepard’s name is attached to the deaths of a biotic with a psychotic break and civilians, and you’re more worried about the Subcommittee?” the Captain asked in disbelief.

* * *

“Adams, I need more juice!”

Chief Greg Adams’ voice over the comm was strained but patient. “Joker, if she gets anymore juice, you’re going to have to get out and push us to the shipping yard. The core’s already disgruntled at being manhandled in atmo.”

“Damn it.” Joker cut the feed and went back to concentrating getting around the ash in the atmosphere and away from the geth fighters dogging them. “I’m done,” he declared. “Finished. No more volcanoes. Ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Amorphophallus titanium_** _– from the Ancient Greek ‘amorphos’ = shapeless or misshapen, ‘phallus’ = penis, and ‘titan’ = giant/huge; also known as the Titan Arum, the corpse flower, and the Devil’s Tongue, the_ amorphophallus titanium _can reach up to 2.5 (about 10 feet) meters tall, is native to the rainforests of Sumatra, blooms very few times in its lifetime, and smells of decomp while in bloom; from 1937 until 2000, it was the official flower of the Bronx, New York. Also, my new name for Udina (Sorry, Bronx)._
> 
> **Codex**
> 
> **Humanity and the Systems Alliance: Operations: Bring Down the Sky**
> 
> In December of 2182 (Earth standard), a batarian terrorist group calling itself “The Insightful Pillars” hijacked an asteroid with the intent of crashing it into the main colony of Scott of the planet Terra Nova in the Asgard system. Lieutenant Commander Calleigh Shepard led a Special Forces team to stop them.
> 
> Most of the details of the mission are classified by the Human Systems Alliance; however, a leaked report discovered by Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani suggests that Lt. Cmd. Shepard may have purposely sacrificed both members of her squad and the majority of the hostages to apprehend the batarian leader responsible for the terrorist attack. Miss al-Jilani has accused Shepad of betraying her squad and those who depended on her sound judgment. A further report leaked to the Alliance News Network suggests that the batarian leader, known only as Balak, was not apprehended. 
> 
> The Human Systems Alliance denies Lt. Cmd. Shepard did any wrong doing and promoted Shepard to the rank of Commander. Commander Shepard currently serves as the XO of the SSV Normandy SR-1, a joint turian-human ship currently commissioned to the Human Systems Alliance under the command of Captain David E. Anderson.
> 
> Miss al-Jilani has promised her viewers a follow-up.


	40. War Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Excuse me while I experiment with Shepard's POV. (BTW - Badasses_ can _feel pain.)_
> 
>  _Disclaimer: No crack was used in the writing of this chapter, however, copious amounts vodka was consumed. Upon sobering up, I fixed the grammatical FAIL, removed all incorrect a's and e's in the word_ anesthetized ( _which I cannot spell properly even while sober without help), did research on bullet wounds and surgery, and received a friendly push from Sinvraal. In it's current state is acceptable enough to add to the canon._
> 
> _YMMV, but I hope you enjoy._

"Tech sucks balls."

Now, Shepard couldn't say that she didn't like tech. Quite the contrary: She loved it. Loved using it; loved playing with it; loved learning about it.

Mostly, though, Shepard just loved using it. With the right application, it allowed her to function at optimal levels within society, human or otherwise. Sometimes it allowed her to function at optimal levels within places she wasn't supposed to go, human or otherwise.

It also made explosions bigger.

Bonus.

The AutoASS, however, was _not_ something she loved. In fact, were one to be so bold, one could say that she absolutely loathed the medical machines. She loathed AutoASSes with a passion so fierce that, were the machines not beneficial to patching up her marines (or inconveniently attached to the bulkhead on a ship in a vacuum), she'd plant explosives around each and every one of the devices and cackle with sadistic glee as they exploded into fiery vortices of death, doom and destruction.

She most especially hated the one operating on her shoulder. It held a special place in her hell and she would rejoice were the device to magically (or biotically) go boom. (Post-op, of course. She was rather attached, as it were, to the object of her loathing.)

Since she had opted to stay awake during surgery to her shoulder –a brilliant choice, really; there was work to be done, after all and most could be done by voice-activated programs on her omni-tool – and although she was numb and her brain warm and fuzzy – another wonderful idea; work was definitely getting done and in such an orderly manner, too –she could hear the slick of fluid against tissue and the Auto's instrument arm and the crunch of bones as the machine did its duty and cleared away the necrotic tissue under Dr. Chakwas skillful fingertips. The sounds that came from her own body were not sounds she thought it should be making.

Why was she still awake again?

Oh. Right.

Work.

Getting it _done._

The geth's sniper slug penetrated at such an angle that it had broken her clavicle, made a mess of the tendons, ligaments and nerves in around her shoulder and torn out a hole in her back, fracturing the top of her shoulder blade in the process. Or something like that. It was more likely the bone fragments that did the major damage – not including the through-and-through hole in the first place – but Shepard was too dizzy to contemplate bone fragments in her current state.

Two scars for the price of one. Thank creators, makers and or God for grenades. Justice was served with a nice-sized helping of thermal paste.

Medi-gel had sealed the wound before she could bleed to death, and as a graduate of the N program Shepard had special genetic modifications that increased adrenaline, platelet and collagen output by 3.5 to 6.89% to increase clotting and healing and reduce blood loss during such situations. The modifications were based on krogan regeneration and had just skirted the Sudham-Wolcott Genetic Heritage Act of 2161 by calling 'regeneration during healing' a 'natural process' and skillfully left out the part about the krogan metabolism study.

She slurred something that was supposed to come out coherently and mean, "Something nasty has reached my tongue," because _what_ was that god-awful taste? Whatever drugs were in her system, they'd completely infused into her very being and were now doing push-ups on her tongue in the spectacularly-epic, vomit-inducing flavors of Raunchy, Nasty and Moldy Cheese.

For some reason unbeknownst to Commander Shepard, what she was thinking and what she was saying didn't sound exactly the same and after the final slurred word left her lips and several seconds of stupefaction, she realized, _Oh. Duh. Drugged. How silly of me to think the good doctor could possibly understand that._

And, oh, hey, were those lights supposed to be that bright? Because: "Oh. Pretty."

"Commander, I think it would be best if you were anesthetized for the duration of the operation."

And that was all Shepard remembered.

* * *

The Normandy's Internal Emissions System was a total wreck by the time they limped into dry-dock in the local cluster two weeks after running from geth rockets, a krogan Battlemaster, a rockslide, lava and a geth mother ship.

Shepard took one look at the datapad Adams offered her and felt as smart as the proto-lichen on Casbin. The thought of Casbin took her mind in a whole other direction, an unwanted lump forming her throat.

"Liberty, shore leave," she said, handing the datapad back to her chief engineer, still trying to digest the litany of engineer-speak. In a word, or perhaps a sentence: The IES was fucked. "Discuss it with Pressly."

Adams nodded. "They have been through a lot, Commander," he said, eyeing her arm sling as he did so.

She nodded in return, refusing to acknowledge her injury and thinking instead about the strange dream in the infirmary and lights and the nagging thought that Chakwas knew more than she let on and perhaps some of the command staff did as well.

Shepard continued on her way from her quarters, where she'd confined herself for the last six days until she could walk upright without shrieking in pain and slapping the comm for Chakwas to increase the flow of painkillers into her system. The medical excuse was "light duty". Shepard didn't argue. The pain alone put her into fits of dizzying nausea that she didn't want any of the crew to witness. Hell, she didn't want to witness it and it was her body. No choice.

Such was life.

What she didn't like was being out of action. She thought of all sorts of things to do while not having the ability to do them. Like eating, using a stylus, or pushing down her pants with two hands instead of one to use the head. Hell, she couldn't flex her hand without feeling shards of glass under her skin from her elbow up.

The medical terminology was "nerve damage."

Actually, that was what she had _understood_. The medical terminology went over her pay grade as far as she was concerned. The doctor knew what she was doing, and so Shepard had faith that the "nerve damage" was repairable. Just as she knew the IES was repairable.

But it was going to be a long six months before she would be without any pain and it was going to be a long twelve weeks before the Normandy was fully operational again.

She entered the infirmary to find Dr. T'Soni chatting with Dr. Chakwas.

"Commander," Dr. Chakwas greeted.

Dr. T'Soni stood up quickly from her seat, ringing her hands as she did so. Her eyelids fluttered. Shepard had little experience with asari, so she didn't know if T'Soni was merely blinking or if it was a cultural thing. "Oh, Commander."

The asari looked... guilty? _What now?_ "Something I should know?"

"We were just discussing you," Chakwas said, giving her best shit-eating grin. "I was regaling her with your latest exploits."

Dr. T'Soni put a hand to her head, running a thumb along the dark scales of her eye ridge. "I, um. Yes," was all that she said. If anything, she looked out of place and embarrassed.

Despite herself, Shepard smiled, took a seat on the nearest bed. "Please don't put me on a pedestal, Doctor Chakwas. You know me. I'm clumsy and fall a lot."

"I do not think you are clumsy at all," T'Soni gushed. "You are very graceful. Like an agul bird." Her eyelids did the flutter thing again. "I mean. For a human. The ones that I've met…" She trailed off. "I have not met very many of your species."

"The Commander was trying and failing to be witty," Dr. Chakwas said, standing to aid Shepard in the removal of her button-down, formal dress shirt. It was the only type of shirt Shepard could wear and get in and out of comfortably.

T'Soni looked perplexed. "Witty? Oh! A joke."

"The Commander's brand of humor usually falls flat on its face."

"I'm sorry: 'Flat on its face?'"

"Doesn't work," Shepard supplied, then winced.

"I see." It was clear that the asari did not. She seemed... distracted by the sudden lack of Shepard's shirt.

"We'll be holding a final debrief as soon as Alenko comes on duty," Shepard informed her as Dr. Chakwas began her tongue clicking as she examined the wound track for debris. "You should be there, Dr. T'Soni. We could use your input."

T'Soni brightened, inclined her head. "In that case, I should, perhaps, update my translator to your dialect. If you will excuse me, Commander." She did something that appeared to be the cross between a curtsy and rude human gesture. "Dr. Chakwas." The gesture and not-quite-a-curtsy came up again. Then she hurried off to the storage room where she had set up her one bag of belongings.

"Was that an old 'up-yours' hand signal?" Shepard wondered aloud as the door to the storage room slid closed.


	41. Pendent Opera Interrupta

One Bell chimed, signaling the end of Afternoon Watch. Afternoon Watch was the first Watch able to go to port for shore leave or Liberty.  The _Normandy_ was going to be crawling with Alliance and Hierarchy pukes within a few hours and most of the bridge crew wouldn’t be needed during repairs.  Shit, most of the _crew_ wouldn’t be needed, and that meant mandatory two weeks shore leave for non-essentials. That included Joker and most of the bridge crew, the MaRINE detail including Alenko and Williams, the aliens, and the command staff.  Engineering got a forty-eight hour Liberty, but they were in a port close enough to the Primary Relays that Normandy’s pukes could go home and get back sober enough to work their voodoo on the systems.

_No work._

What the hell was Joker going to do with his newfound time? Two weeks? With a rogue Spectre heralding a war between organics and AI?

_I need a new pair of socks._

Joker exxed out of the shell, added Lieutenant Hendricks to the system, and gave a good, long stretch to buy time for Hendricks.   _Late again._ _The hell, Beck?_ What was her problem lately?  She was usually five to ten minutes early for Watch rotation.

He hefted himself out the pilot’s seat as just as Hendricks arrived on the bridge. Not a red hair was out of place on her head, so he gave his usual: “Later, Beautiful.”

To which she responded, eloquently, “Up yours, sir.”

Joker gave a long suffering and dramatic sigh and noted that the corners of her thin lips turned up ever so slightly, but otherwise she made herself busy checking the defunct systems he’d just spent the last four hours trying to recalibrate. At least she was in a slightly better mood today, and he got a ‘sir’ for his efforts.  Maybe she would take him up on drinks when her bridge Watch ended in four hours and she was officially, in civvies’ terms, ‘on holiday’.

He gripped his crutches and began the long slog through CIC receiving salutes along the way and ignoring them as usual. The only other idiot in CIC wearing a cover was Vassiliadis, and he usually ignored the salutes too. But rules were rules, and the enlisteds had to salute any officer or higher-ranking noncom wearing a cover—which was why Joker chose to wear the SR-1 hat to begin with.

_Good to be king._

Tension was thick in CIC. Even though they were safely tucked away in dry-dock, they had every reason to be on edge.

The ship was practically inoperable because of system failures across the board. They narrowly avoided destruction by a geth momship and its baby ships and a super volcano because of the ship’s problems.  The over-heating of the IES had damaged the food and water supply, and they had all but run out of edible food and clean water in the two weeks it had taken them to get to a safe haven. 

They had a potential threat on board in the form of one very hot asari.  No one trusted said very hot asari.  Scuttlebutt ran rampant with suspicion of her association with geth and Saren and the over-exaggeration of her ‘mind powers.’   The marines had a new post rotated into their schedules, that of guarding the infirmary. Dr. T’Soni couldn’t leave unless she had an escort. She was permitted to the head and to the mess and nowhere else. Pressly’s orders. Shepard had yet to belay those orders.

And the Commander had nearly died on Therum and, from what Joker had heard from Private Lu, during surgery.  Joker had been quick to tell Lu to button her beak at the latter. No one but no one needed to know that. Shepard had enough shit on her plate. She didn’t need the damn crew thinking she was anyone but God Almighty Herself. As far as Joker was concerned, _that_ was the way a CO should be, and he thought that was exactly who Shepard was and always would be.  Only Anderson and a few other CO’s had ever impressed Joker that much.

Unfortunately, Joker thought as he picked his way down the ladderwell, the Throne of the Universe wasn’t currently fitting for Her Almightiness since Commander Shepard had been seen all of two times since Therum, and She hadn’t been seen in the best light in either instance.

The first time occurred upon their arrival into the cargo bay when she collapsed from either pain or blood loss from the gaping hole in her shoulder as she exited the Mako and was rushed by the trauma unit to the infirmary.  Joker made sure scuttlebutt emphasized blood loss since Shepard was the biggest badass who ever lived and Never Felt Pain Ever, and none of the away team was talking until after they had a mission de-brief and turned in their mission reports.  The second time occurred when Shepard left the infirmary a week after the surgery looking like death took a shit on her. She was bruised and swollen and more pale than usual. She maintained her open door policy, but only the command staff, the aliens, and ground crew had been so bold to check on her and enlisteds only interacted with the CO if they were delta sierra anyway and deemed Not Worthy to be amongst the crew (mercifully, all enlisteds still passed muster thanks to Anderson’s keen eye in the vetting process and Her Almightiness’ ability to crack the whip and give out cookies).

Joker shook his head as entered the galley, grabbed a tray and filled it with edible chow. Williams’ penchant for vat-grown pork had grown on him over the last few weeks, no thanks in part to it being the only thing that hadn’t soured. It wasn’t the hamburger he had been craving since eating one at the layover in the Andura Sector, but it was better tasting than creamed chipped, vat-grown beef on toast.  And he got corn and beans as meat-identifiers instead of potatoes and canned Sirona-grown peaches.

The mess was crowded.  Alenko was sitting at the far end of the table, the only available seat right in front of him – as usual.  Joker grinned as he shuffled over, tray in hand. _Hell, yeah._ _Lucky day._

“Kaidan.”

“Joker.”

“Seat taken?”

Alenko shrugged, nudged the unidentifiable grey meat around on his tray.  He pushed the seat out with his foot so Joker could sit, but didn’t look up.  Joker considered either whacking the biotic in the shin with his crutch or throwing corn at him, but decided he was too hungry to bother.

Getting off Therum with a wounded asari in his arms had affected Alenko somehow.  (Joker wouldn’t mind a wounded asari in his arms. Just not one that was too wounded to do that freaky eye thing they did when doing their sex-thing.)

Or maybe it was because Shepard had nearly died.

Again.

He opened his mouth to ask a question, but like clockwork, Joker’s Omni-tool activated at 1800 with the latest news reports from the Alliance News Network. He managed to swallow a bite of his chow before bad news struck.

“Tragedy on Arcturus Station,” the news correspondent announced, and everyone at the crowded mess table stopped talking.

“Shit,” Joker muttered. Mom lived in the Mugi-boshi Ward. When was the last time he’d called home? His stomach suddenly tied itself in knots.

“A bomb hidden in a garbage receptacle exploded this morning, injuring eight people and killing two humans,” the correspondent continued. A holo of the damage appeared above her head, smoker curling around the habitats, orange flames licking oak and maple trees of the area. Joker recognized the Mugi-boshi immediately and his heart jumped into his throat. _Shit._ It was within walking distance to his mother’s flat. “A spokesman for the Systems Alliance Military Police said they have detained fifty-five people after the blast in the Mugi-boshi Ward of Arcturus Station, the capital of the Systems Alliance. The spokesman declined to give names of the two humans because their families had yet to be notified. Three of the injured were visiting elcor tourists who wandered away from their tour herd.

“Aina Shikikawa takes you live to Da Jiao Ward within Arcturus Station for the full report.”

Joker’s mouth went dry as the cam changed angles.  Da Jiao was the neighboring Ward, but the reporter, Aina Shikikawa, a mic implant nestled in her ear, was over-looking Mugi-boshi. From the angle, all the habitats looked the same.

She began her report, looking somber: “This morning, tensions between human factions rose. No L2 biotic extremists have come forward claiming responsibility for this morning's devastating blast; however, many residents of Mugi-boshi Ward believe biotics are responsible for the bomb. The Alliance Parliamentary Subcommittee for Transhuman Studies went into its final regular session of the quarter on March twenty-ninth. Reparations for biotics with severe impairments, including crippling pain and psychotic breaks, are on the table once again. This will be the first time in six months that the Subcommittee has reopened reparation discussion. A decision on reparations for L2s was put on hold when an L3-implanted biotic Alliance serviceman committed suicide last November after turning on her squadmates and killing civilians in what the Alliance Navy has called a peacekeeping mission. The Alliance Navy has continued to refuse to give the biotic’s name until the formal investigation into why the L3 snapped has been conducted."

Joker pulled off his Omni-tool and handed it to Alenko, then left the mess to call home.

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

 

* * *

_Holy hell._

Kaidan blinked, his expression mimicking that of the entirety of the mess hall.  What suicide? What mission? Civilians? He swallowed.  This was bad for all biotics if an L3 popped her cork and somehow the media got wind of it.  He looked up from Joker’s Omni-tool as the cam angle shifted.  Joker was leaving.

“Joker?”

The helmsman said nothing, his face grim as he hurried away as fast as his condition would let him.  Kaidan doubted the man even heard him. He remembered then.  Joker’s family was on Arcturus.

He left Joker’s Omni-tool where it lay for the crew in the mess to watch, pulling up the network on his own and searching for the Commander’s tags on Normandy’s internal system tracker.

Shepard, Calleigh M. # Cmdr. # 5923-AC-2826 # O Negative # No Preference

Location: Infirmary

_Ah, hell._

He wasn’t looking forward to being the bearer of bad news, but he was certain that the shit just hit the fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **pendent opera interrupta** – “the work hangs interrupted” -Virgil’s Aeneid, Book IV


	42. Official Channels

_A bomb on a space station?_

Were humans _crazy_?

Tali looked over at Gun Dog, who was watching the news feed while devouring as much food as he could as fast as he could. She curled her lip in disgust, for once grateful that none of the humans could see her expressions through the envirosuit's dark mask. Gun Dog didn't fit into the compartment she labeled “Crazy.”

His compartment she labeled as “Revolting.”

Tali cast her eyes in the direction of Corporal Hardy. His expression was indiscernible, which was unlike him. He wasn't as outgoing as Guo had been, but at least she could understand the subtle differences in his expression better than say, Shepard or Joker, who (according to many of the crew) were masters of The Neutral. No one she spoke to called it anything but _The Neutral_ , although Kaidan often referred to it as their ‘game face’–which made Tali’s translator belch until she loaded a new archive and found that no games were conducted across either the ship’s helmsman or the commander’s faces and referred directly to a human card game called Poker.

And Poker was _fun_! Especially after she learned that she could earn credits…by counting the cards.

"Do you have family on Arcturus Station, Corporal Hardy?" she asked, curious to know what the human was thinking and taking her mind off credit-earning.

He blinked, his eyes coming to focus on her. It took him a few seconds to realize that she had asked a question. "Huh? Oh, no. No, ma'am. My family is from Earth." He was thoughtful a few beats then added with a rueful smile, “The only way to get off Earth is Be Rich or Be Biotic. I'm not sure which is worse.”

It unnerved her sometimes when the human marines addressed her as ma'am, reminding her of the Flotilla Marines who forewent their ship names to protect the Flotilla. Always on the move, the Marines shifted from ship to ship all in the name of the Flotilla. And in the Flotilla, she wasn't anyone but Admiral Rael'Zorah's daughter.

There were a lot of expectations that came with ma'am.

Here though, surrounded by humans and tracking geth and their rogue Spectre master, she was only a young quarian discovering the galaxy and helping bring down the Plight of Civilization. She was Someone and No One at the same time…and she found she loved it.

"Jazz," she said using the nickname his team called him, "My name is Tali. Remember?"

He gave a genuine smile then. "Sorry, Tali. Habit."

"This was significant?" she asked, gesturing in the direction of the feed, and at his expression she amended, "More than the bombing, I mean. For biotic humans?"

He nodded. "Yes, m—ah, yeah. Yeah. Civilian biotics have a real tough time as it is. Most join the military for the perks or because there’s no other place to go after their families disown them.  There’s a big deal going on right now with a few religious groups saying we’re not human in opposition to the L2 reparation discussion at Parliament.”

His expression changed. “L3s, like me, aren't supposed to go off the deep end and start killing people."

The translation for 'go off the deep end' popped up in Tali's HUD, and she recognized the idea behind it immediately. Psychotic breaks happened with every species, even quarian. Some minds weren't equipped for everyday life. Some people experienced trauma so horrible that their minds couldn't process it.

Some quarians couldn't handle the Pilgrimage and came back to the Flotilla damaged shells of their former selves.

"Not everyone is the same," she mused.

Hardy looked at her, studied her helmet. "You're right," he said eventually, but pointed to the feed. "Doesn't make this any easier to stomach."

She nodded after the translation appeared in her HUD. "You're right," she echoed.

* * *

Kaidan entered the Comm Room and made his way down the ramp, his boots thudding on the metal deck, heavier than usual. Shepard would be there in a few minutes. She’d been discussing with Dr. Chakwas an exercise regimen to strengthen her arms and shoulders after her injuries healed so that she wouldn’t be hampered in the field.

Kaidan had the utmost respect for Shepard.  She was beautiful, charismatic—a unique force of nature. He’d follow her to the edge of existence and back. The idea terrified him and thrilled him at the same time. There were very few women– _COs_ , he mentally corrected, _we’re on a warship, for God sakes, not some tuna boat_ —that could make him feel that way.

Regardless of his opinion of Shepard’s…battle prowess, he thought it was damn stupid to try to work during a dangerous surgical procedure when it would have been more beneficial to everyone to let the doctor do her job. Because of her insistence on staying awake for part of the time, the Commander would endure a longer-than-normal recovery period. Her movements on the table had hindered Dr. Chakwas’ ability to operate and had done more damage to the nerve-endings in Shepard’s shoulder, including several biotic nodes. Once it was clear that Shepard’s wakefulness was a hindrance, he and Dr. Chakwas anesthetized her with an unspoken agreement never to tell Shepard the why behind the recovery period.

Kaidan shook his head at the memory wondering why he expected anything else from Shepard. She was a work-a-holic through and through. Of _course_ she was going to try to work during surgery.  Next time—and with the way Shepard fought long and hard during even the briefest of skirmishes, Kaidan knew there would be a Next Time—he wasn’t going to let her say no to a good drugging during surgery.

His mind jumped to the current problem. As of late, he was too busy (and Normandy had been too far away from the comm relay network) to stay abreast of the politics surrounding the L2 reparation discussions. He felt completely out of the loop. Shepard’s face shut down when he’d told her about the bombing on Arcturus and let her see what little footage there was of it. Maybe it was nervousness about the backlash biotics would inevitably receive or maybe Shepard was concerned about her own L3 config. There was something about the way she listened to the reporter and watched the feed. If he’d learned anything from serving over four months with her, Shepard’s expression—or lack thereof—told him that she knew more about what was going on than he did. She had priority access to any comms, he mused.

Whatever it was that Shepard knew, Kaidan's nervousness bled through to full-blown worry by the time he reached the end of the ramp.

WAITING TO CONNECT loomed in red on the FTL comm's screen. Joker stood at the comm unit hunched over his crutches, his disease evident in the awkward curve of his spine and the bowing of his right leg. He didn't turn around or move as Kaidan took a seat at one of the chairs bolted to the floor near the FTL arrays. Kaidan wanted to ask how Joker was holding up, but refrained, knowing that 1) if Kaidan was in Joker’s shoes, he’d be beside himself with worry and 2) Joker would speak his mind when he was good and ready and not a moment before.

A minute turned into ten before Joker finally spoke. "Comm bandwidth in and around Arcturus is overloaded. Closest network is Asgard, and that’s still fucked up from the batarian terrorists in January." The words came out calm, even.

 _Sounds about right._

Trillions of sentients lived in the galaxy, and most of them had media agencies vying for comm buoy bandwidth. Any type of catastrophic event blacked out most communications due to the influx of governmental, military, and media transmission bursts. During Wartime, the comm buoy relays were the first to get taken out.  Because of the network structure, taking out the buoys closet to the cluster’s mass relay would cut off all communications to the cluster. It was a tactic used by pirates, but also resulted in faster response time by the Alliance. Anytime a cluster went dark, ships and troops were mobilized immediately. Seven major buoys had gone down around Terra Nova. They were still rebuilding

"Have you routed through the official channels?"

Joker's head swung around, and he stared angrily at Kaidan. "Of course I have. What channels during an emergency are there other than _official_?" he demanded. “Besides, it’s not like we have–“

He stopped talking when the comm room door slid open, and Shepard strode with purpose down the ramp, injured arm firmly wrapped in a sling. She glanced at Kaidan as she passed him. She still had her game face on. Kaidan's blood ran cold, his pulse beating a rhythm in his ears.

She addressed the VI, "Betty, end communiqué and encrypt and route communications packet through nearest buoy. Priority access: Shepard, Calleigh. Clearance: Citadel Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Passcode: Don't clog the tubes. Encryption code: O-U-O-S-V-A-V-V."

"Voice Ident Verified," Betty replied. "Priority access: granted, Spectre Shepard. Awaiting further inquiry."

Kaidan blinked. She was… Was it really that easy?

"Admiral Steven Hackett, Fifth FleetCOM," Shepard said. "Arcturus Station, Alliance Space."

"Access granted: Please wait for connection."

"How many in the queue?"

"Normandy is currently number four."

Shepard nodded absently. "Have a seat, Joker," she told him.

He looked as though he wanted to argue with her, opening his mouth angrily, but relented and sat in the nearest chair to the FTL console.

"Normandy is currently number three," Betty reported.

"I don't have to tell either one of you that whatever is said during this conversation doesn't leave this room," she said once Joker adjusted himself and laid his crutches aside. "So I'm only going to say this once: This conversation never happened, gentlemen. You'll say nothing. The Admiral isn’t to know you’re in the room."

She turned from the console and looked both of them in the eye until they both nodded.

Betty said, "Normandy is currently number two."

Shepard typed in a series of codes into the computer. Kaidan's mouth fell open when he saw the characters that were scrolling across the screen as she typed.

Turian basic.

 _Holy hell._

"Betty, locate Lieutenants Alenko and Moreau," she ordered the computer.

"Logged: Lieutenant Moreau is on shore leave. Location: Unknown. Unable to locate on Normandy," the VI said. "Logged: Lieutenant Alenko has reported for Dog Watch. Location: Engineering."

"Thank you, Betty."

"Normandy is currently number one," Betty announced to Kaidan and Joker's dumbfounded stares. "Prepare for connection to Admiral Hackett's office, Arcturus Station, Earth System Alliance Territories."

* * *

"You've seen the news," Admiral Hackett said without preamble. There were many times Shepard enjoyed being right. This was not one of those times. That he was expecting her call only reinforced her belief that whatever shit was going on with biotics and Arcturus, she—as a result of having to defend herself against her biotic squad member that went three shades of bat shit crazy, as a result of being a biotic or as a result of being the first human Spectre; maybe all three—was expected to wade chin deep into it.

Although it wasn't a question, she nodded, ignoring the sudden pain that raced from her collarbone to her neck. "Yes, sir, and I have two questions."

He said nothing right away, and then asked, "Only two?"

"At the moment, sir."

"To answer your first question," he said without allowing her to ask. "We do believe they are referring to your old squad mate. The investigation on her death just closed. Orders for your detainment have been issued by Ambassador Udina."

He leveled her with a wry look. "Commander Donut of the SSV Neverdock received the orders two days ago."

Shepard grimaced, not sure to feel relieved that someone believed her version of events or angry that the incident had occurred to begin with. "That was going to be my third question, sir," she told him, curiosity to ask about the report nearly outweighing what she came to the comm room to do. Knowing that it was _her_ didn't sit any easier with Shepard. L3s were supposed to be stable. _She_ was supposed to be stable. One of the best, Shepard had been told _. Spikes a little on the high side for an L3_ , they'd said.

 _Bullshit,_ she said. __

She laid the matter to rest with a firm clearing of her throat before looking the holo of the Commandant of Fifth Fleet in the eye and stating, "One of my crew has family on Arcturus. Normandy can't make it. We've got too many repairs and not enough hours in the day to do them. I want a pick up for him."

"Granted," Hackett said. He didn't even hesitate. The hair of the back of Shepard's neck rose. Something was definitely amiss. Even for a Spectre, what she had requested was a fairly tall order. "Anything else?"

She hesitated, restraining herself from looking at Alenko. "Biotics on board are a little antsy, sir. Orders?"

"I understand you have a BAaT graduate on board," the Admiral said after a moment.

"Yes, sir. Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko."

"Good soldier. Doesn't go off script."

Shepard narrowed her odd-colored eyes. Hackett knew damn well who was on the crew roster and why they were chosen. They wouldn't _be_ _aboard_ without his final approval. Normandy's maiden voyage was too big politically for him not to be involved, and now that she was under a Spectre’s command meant he had to play ball with every Council Race.

"Have you spoken with the Council?"

"No, sir. We'll be having a debriefing later today to discuss what the Council needs to know."

Hackett nodded. "I've read your preliminaries and Dr. Chakwas' light duty orders," he said conversationally. "Worst timing in the history of the Alliance."

"I've submitted a formal protest to the geth that got the shot in, sir."

"Report to Arcturus with Joker," he ordered, surprising her. Was she going to be detained? "Bring Alenko with you. You're a Spectre, and I have no authority over your reports to the Council, but I strongly recommend belaying submission of mission reports to the Citadel until after you've reached Arcturus. I’m sending an encrypted burst you and Alenko will need to review before getting here. The transport is already en route."

"Yes, sir," she said. _Already en route?_ "Should I prepare for questions?"

"Not necessary. Commander Donut has everything in control."

"He sounds delightful, sir. Can't wait to meet him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**SSV Neverdock** – Play on USS Neverdock which is NavSpeak for a ship that appears to stay out for longer periods of time. (Usually in reference to the sailor's own ship.)_
> 
>  **Tuna Boat** – Present day(ish?): derogatory term that refers to a mostly (all? more than 20? IDK) female crew. Redundant’verse: evolved from present day term and refers to a crew that doesn’t give a shit about fraternization; although still derogatory, because gender equality is (mostly) not an issue within the military, it has lost most of its original meaning; usually the longer the cruise, the more prone a ship is to becoming one.
> 
>  **Commander Donut** – Inspired by my food at the time of writing. :) But, it would be fucking awesome to hear Lance Henriksen say, "Commander Donut has everything in control." Do you hear it? Glorious!


	43. It's Always teh Quiet Ones

Liara tried to understand the humans' positions. She really did.

In their eyes, Mother was Bad and deserved Punishment for her alleged crimes. Liara most assuredly understood that. Mother stood accused of aiding and abetting an attack on a human colony with casualties in the tens of thousands. Liara wanted answers to as much as the humans did.

But did armed soldiers really have to accompany her to the toilet?

Hitting them with singularities and running for the nearest airlock were the furthest things from her mind. First, she had to pee; peeing in a spacesuit was out of the question. Second, she did not want any more trouble than necessary. Third, they were human; there was no telling what they were capable of.

Armed guards were not necessary to walk the short distance from the medical bay to the nearest lavatory. Once she got to there, she couldn't go anywhere unless she suddenly manifested the ability to walk through walls – which would be quite exciting, now that she thought about it.

 _Justicar Liara: Righting Wrongs, bringing Justice to All and staying True to the Code._

Except that meant public appearances, talking to people, explosions, and killing those who did not adhere to the Code. Sheer, black fright swept through her at the very thought of holding another conversation with any of the human crew, let alone antagonizing any one of them enough to warrant an explosion. And she was certain as her skin was blue that the humans wouldn't understand the Code.

She made haste relieving herself and washed her hands, watching her reflection in the mirror. _What another fine mess you're in, Liara_ , she thought, noting with some consternation that it was _Mother_ who had gotten her into this particular predicament and not her fascination with the Protheans. At least she wasn't in trouble with the hanar this time.

Well, no, that wasn't entirely true. Hanar made up the galactic community, even if they only had an embassy on the Citadel. The entire galactic community, or at least the part that mattered, was searching for Mother and Saren.

She didn't understand it. Mother always advocated peace and acceptance. Not War. Never war. Liara's mind fluttered away in anxiety, her thoughts diverging. Perhaps if she looked the problem objectively, she could find a motive behind Mother's involvement with Saren and geth. _Benezia. Not Mother._ Liara's throat worked, an acute sense of loss washing over her. _Mother wouldn't do anything Benezia is accused of doing._

One of the soldiers coughed. Or cleared his throat. Or growled. Or… or _something_. Was he growing impatient with her dawdling? When did they install a timer on her lavatory time? She sighed and pushed away from the counter, glancing one final time at herself in the mirror.

When she walked in the direction of the medical bay, one of the soldiers said, "Not that way, ma'am."

"Pardon?"

"Comm Room," the other said. He pointed to the stairwell. "The mission briefing has started."

She only nodded and followed the first up.

* * *

Kaidan let out a breath when Dr. T'Soni finally stepped away from the Commander. Both women were breathing hard, Shepard's cheeks flushed, and the doctor's eyes had returned to their normal blue color. Dr. T'Soni staggered away. Garrus stood and held her upright.

Shepard staggered to the nearest seat and flopped down, boneless. She looked like she had marathon sprinted a few kilometers. Had Shepard looked like that when the asari on Feros, Shi'ala, had given Shepard the Cipher? Kaidan wondered. He couldn't recall with clarity; the smell of the Thorian had been messing too badly with his senses.

Williams was on her feet, fists balled at her sides. "Commander, are you okay?" She glared at the doctor who looked on dazed.

Shepard didn't answer at first, only gazed at the doctor. Then: "Well, that was… new." She shook her head. "I'm fine, Williams."

"You had us worried, ma'am," Kaidan said as Williams resumed her seat.

"I'm fine," the commander assured him, but didn't meet his concerned look. She was too busy studying the asari. "Well?" she asked after a moment.

Dr. T'Soni managed to get back to her seat with Garrus' help. "The—the images were so intense. I wasn't expecting—" She swallowed, put a hand to her head. With effort, she spoke again, her eyes closed as though she were replaying the information she had received from Shepard's mind. A snake of doubt crawled into Kaidan's brain. What if the doctor had deceived them? He set the thought aside, compartmentalizing. If he stayed on that track, he wouldn't be able to function. He could ask Shepard about it later. They had a long flight to Arcturus tomorrow. There would be time to speak to her then.

"The beacon must have been badly damaged," Dr. T'Soni was saying. "I'm, I'm not sure–"

"You mean all that bullshit was for nothing?" Williams demanded.

"Easy, Williams," Shepard replied. "We're all on the same side."

"You trust her now, Shepard?" Tali asked while the doctor massaged her temples.

"I saw enough of her thoughts to know she has no idea what Saren or Benezia wanted with her," Shepard replied. The asari gasped, covering her mouth as her eyes widened. "I wasn't supposed to receive anything, was I?"

Dr. T'Soni shook her head. "No! I'm not… I didn't mean for—Oh, Goddess. No. I'm so sorry. That wasn't supposed to happen!" She appeared to shrink into her seat, her face turning more blue than usual. Kaidan had seen enough asari porn to realize that Dr. T'Soni had initialized more than a simple transfer of information. He gaped. _Holy hell._

 _That was some kind of "oops,"_ Kaidan thought angrily, his body tense. And Shepard wasn't... why wasn't she upset? He swallowed. The snake of doubt became a snake that coiled around his heart.

 _Ah, damn it._

The Comm Room went deathly quiet, eyes darting furtively from Dr. T'Soni to Shepard and back again and again. Even the equipment seemed to realize a faux pas had taken place and the normal beeps and whirs were muted. Out of respect or shock one couldn't be sure.

"Well, at least it was consensual," Garrus spoke up unhelpfully.

Wrex guffawed. "Damn. It's always the quiet ones."

Shepard gave an unladylike snort. "At least it was... tingly."

Dr. T'Soni, completely mortified, squirmed in her seat. Her apologies were muffled by the hand covering her face.


	44. The Past is a Foreign Country

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Ardak-Yakshi and asari physiology: Since Shepard doesn’t learn about Ardak-Yakshi until ME2, Dr. Chakwas’ information is deliberately skewed. (Like listening to the news in the elevators after completing a mission.)

"How is she, Doctor?"

Dr. Karin Chakwas looked up from her reading material. Relief washed through her. The Nos Astra Assembly of Advanced Medical Procedures had published its latest findings on bone weave nanotech. The article was absurdly boring. It was as if the writer had known Karin was going to read it and deliberately chose tedious and static wording. The only excitement about such a breakthrough in nanotech was the translation glitch. The VI translator had processed 'bone weave technology' as 'rigid boning components.' But one didn't read the Armali Council Medical Ethics Journal for _that_ kind of excitement. After getting a good chuckle, the article went right back to being dull.

Dr. Chakwas didn't have to ask who Commander Shepard was referring to. She only had one patient today: Liara T'Soni. No one else had called in sick. It was astounding to her how many had been in yesterday feeling ill, but, today – now that they were getting ready to leave the ship—no one needed corpsman candy or begged for a sick in quarters chit.

"She's still resting," Karin said.

Shepard nodded, her eyes darting cautiously towards the sleeping asari lying on the medical bed on the far side of the room. If Karin didn't know any better, she'd believe the Commander was feeling guilty about something. It made her nose twitch. Shepard shot things for a living. Regrets were inevitable. Guilt was something to be concerned about. Guilt had put the Commander on admin duty at the Luna N training base for nearly eight months. A rogue Spectre was trying to bring back machines responsible for the destruction of the Prothean Empire. Shepard had to be at her best. After this evening, Karin wouldn't see the Commander for a while. Whatever was going on needed to be corrected, if one could deal with such things in a single conversation.

"Did something happen I should know about, Shepard?" she asked setting aside her data pad and standing.

The Commander sighed. "During the debrief, Dr. T'Soni said she might be able to help with sorting out the Prothean vision. And…we… had sex. I think. I—I'm not really sure." At Dr. Chakwas raised eyebrows, she continued, "I'm not sure if I did something or if she did something that caused our minds to…" She awkwardly clasped her hands together in an effort to show – whatever it was that she was trying to show. " _Talk_ ," she said finally. "It only happened for a second. It was…really fucking _weird_. Like being high but in control of your senses but not in control of…" She sighed and sat on a medical bed. She seemed completely out of her element.

Dr. Chakwas blinked and activated her omni-tool, relaying what had happened before Liara collapsed on the medical bed at the far end of the room. "Liara said she was nauseated and dizzy when she came in. When I scanned her, her electrolytes were low; her heart rate was up; and her higher brain functions were fluctuating. All signs typically associated with asari biotic mating. I didn't ask which of the crew she'd mated with. None of my business." She scanned Shepard as the Commander mouthed the word _mating_ and chewed it over a bit. By the look on Shepard's face it seemed to taste of bad turnips or something. "Perhaps I should have." The Commander's electrolytes were low as well. "Did you activate your biotics?"

"I… I don't know?" Shepard replied, confusion written across her face. "Maybe? For a split second, _I_ wasn't _there_. _We_ were. It wasn't like the asari commando on Feros. You know: a bludgeoning to the back of the head. Nothing but seeing stars and images and my head pounded for days afterward. Liara was different. Warmer? The sensation wasn't just in my head. It was all over. But it wasn't painful. Then I saw… _experienced_ one or some of her memories – I think. I mean, the Protheans are… I don't remember ever feeling that way about Protheans. It was like I was _her_ for a second." She rubbed the back of her neck and closed her eyes. "Hell, I don't know. It was like…" She gave an unladylike snort. "It was… it was really fucking weird," she said again, this time in annoyance. The Commander was too used to shooting things she didn't understand. "Weirder than the first time. And I still can't sort out what the vision is _saying_."

Mating with an asari was a novel experience Karin had enjoyed once so the doctor made a noncommittal sound and looked over the readings. Shepard's brain waves were off the charts and her biotic nodes were pulsing wildly. The Commander wasn't wearing a biotic amp. She clicked her tongue. _Strange._

"I don't know anything about asari telepathy," Shepard said finally.

"The Joining isn't just telepathy," Karin said, not looking up from the readings. She was concerned about the effect of Shepard's damaged nerve endings in her shoulder. It hadn't been very long since Liara came back exhausted. The Commander shouldn't have been showing signs of exertion now. "She extended her biotics; you extended yours. Your nervous systems synced. For all intents and purposes, the two of you experienced a sexual encounter. I can't imagine that a joining wouldn't be a sexual experience for the asari. Even the one on Feros."

"In front of my crew," Shepard stated with a frown. She scrubbed her good hand over her face, scratched at the jagged scar under her eye. "God, I don't even _know_ her. She could be a Sleeper for all we know."

Karin put a hand on her hip. "I doubt they'll think any less of you. I certainly don't. Besides, you now know more about her than you will ever know anyone else. Not everyone has that luxury. Do you feel any indication she would turn on you?"

Shepard shook her head. "It was just supposed to be a simple exchange for information," she stated after a moment of studying Liara. "Any idea what went wrong?"

Dr. Chakwas thought about it a moment. "Hm. I've never known an asari to mate with someone subconsciously, and asari aren't known for being secretive with their sexuality. It takes a conscious effort to sync nervous systems. Both partners have to agree; however I have read about rape cases. Usually ends with the death of the partner. Asari call it _ardat-yakshi_. But I don't think that was the case. She seemed genuinely distraught when she came in. Maybe she was frightened of the images in your mind or your will is stronger than she was expecting and had to push but pushed in the wrong direction. Probably due to lack of experience."

"I've got a lot of ghosts, Doctor. Comes with the job." Shepard puzzled over it a moment. "Wait. 'Lack of experience?' 'Distraught?'" She looked horrified a split second before her game face fell into place, then leaned in and whispered, "I didn't accidentally knock up Dr. T'Soni, did I?"

Dr. Chakwas scanned Liara. "Not yet. If she chooses to use your genetic information she gathered during the process to create an offspring, she can do so when she's ready. I wouldn't recommend it though. She's a bit too young to produce offspring. Her nervous system is fully developed and healthy but there may be complications with the fetus since she doesn't appear to meld regularly."

Shepard looked on with wonder. "She… she'd _tell_ me, right?"

Karin shrugged and scanned Shepard again. Her readings were returning to normal. "No idea. Asari culture is vastly different from our own. I'm told they usually raise their daughters on their own. If their partner is from a short-lived species, they would have to."

"Thanks for the reassurance."

"I do try. Now go eat something. Nothing less than a thousand calories. You'll thank me later."

* * *

"L2 reparations discussions came to a head this morning when parliamentarians Castalia Cortés Villalpando and Armen Doornbosch exchanged punches after exchanging heated words. Both are being treated for minor abrasions and broken noses."

Kaidan massaged his temples in frustration, looking at his omni-tool in disgust.

"Subcommittee Chairman Martin Burns has said discussions will resume tomorrow without them. Tensions have been high since the Subcommittee on Transhuman Studies took their seats at the end of March. They are locked in debate on whether to extend reparations to all biotics who were born before 2161 or to only biotics using the L2 configuration. There is also a matter of the L2 biotics who have received the controversial surgery to upgrade to an L3R configuration. In other news—"

Powering off his omni-tool, Kaidan removed the tool from his wrist and stuffed it in his sea bag. He didn't know what was worse, the extremists or the politicians. He sighed. The shuttle was waiting for him.

It struck him suddenly as he was packing that Shepard had yet to go over with him the information that she had received from Admiral Hackett. After yesterday's fiasco of a debrief, he wondered if it had merely slipped her mind. He checked his sea bag a final time and shut his locker, turning for the elevator.

Putting a hand to his ear, he used the implants under his fingertips to interface with his personal comm unit nestled behind his ear. "Commander?"

"Kaidan." Her voice was warm in his ear.

"Ma'am, the data the Admiral sent," he trailed off.

There was silence on the other end of the comm. Then: "I've reviewed it. It's a long flight, Lieutenant. It'll give us something to go over. There's a lot of it."

"Joker's mother?" Joker was already beside himself with worry. If she'd been in the blast… Well, that wasn't a secret Kaidan was certain he could keep. Not even for the Alliance. The thought didn't sit well with him. The minute he started putting personal feelings before the Alliance was the minute someone got injured, killed even. He liked that thought even less than keeping a secret. _Remember the Rules, Alenko._

To Kaidan's relief, Shepard said, "No. Still no info. L2s and BAaT information mostly. I'm not sure if you know it all. I certainly had no idea."

Surprise siphoned the blood from his face, his pace faltering just as he neared the elevator. He put a hand out to steady himself, his heart thumping madly.

_Oh, no._

He swallowed, let out a controlled breath as the elevator door slid closed. "Conatix?"

 _God_.

She knew about Vyrnuus, knew what happened to him. _What I did to him._ He remembered the look in Rahna's eyes. How he felt when she scurried behind the others, afraid. Only days before those eyes had held such promise, such love. Then Kaidan had become the monster she feared, the monster _he_ feared.

_Damn it._

Another controlled breath and the memories were replaced with Shepard's smile. It didn't ease the anxiety between his shoulder blades.

"We can discuss it on the transport," she answered. "Joker and Liara are already aboard. I'm heading out. You ready?"

"Aye," he told her. "I'm on the elevator now."

"I'm waiting."

There was no animosity in Shepard's voice, so he took it as a good sign. He wondered how much she knew. He wanted to be the one to tell her about BAaT, about Vyrnuus' death. It was something he felt he should tell her. This wasn't something a cold report could tell with any accuracy.

He leaned against the elevator wall, receiving a shock when his bare elbow touched the metal. He stepped away, stood at parade rest, heart in his throat. When the door slid open, Kaidan's dark eyes met Shepard's odd-colored ones. She took in his set face, his clamped mouth, and the lines of concentration around his brows and under his eyes.

"You look like hell," she said.

He nodded, a cold knot forming in his stomach. "Aye, ma'am. We, uh, we should talk."

One eyebrow rose. "About Conatix?" she asked as they fell in step together. Sea bags slung over their shoulders, they made their way up the ladderwell to CIC.

"About Vyrnuus," he answered as he studied her expression half in anticipation, half in dread.

"Get your knuckles rapped a few times, Lieutenant?"

He swallowed. "Yeah," he told her with a shake of his head. "Yeah. You could say that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
> 
> Credit to pookakitten for the ‘knocked up’ line. Too good to pass up. XD


	45. Baggage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liberties taken with in-game dialogue. (Special thanks to thirteenthchime for compiling the “Romance Dialogue Project – Kaidan” at the Mass Effect community on Livejournal.)

The shipping docks at the Czarnobóg Fleet Depot were crowded.  Humans of all shapes, sizes and colors milled about, some moving the heavier, bulkier crates and carriers with exosuit cargo-loaders and cranes.  Systems Alliance soldiers – _Em Peas?_ Liara wondered – stood at attention at nearly every station.  The heavy, dark-gray Hahne-Kedar armor worn by the _Em Peas_ was a contrast with the lighter clothing of the dock workers and merchants. Liara didn’t like the look of the rifles in the _Em Peas_ hands.

She wondered what _Em Peas_ meant exactly; the translator had no alternative words for her. “Lieutenant Moreau?” she asked as she and the Normandy’s helmsman made their way towards the transport that would take them to another human installation, Arcturus Station – the Human System Alliance’s base of operations.  She had not gotten a chance to ask Shepard what the term meant before the Commander had briskly turned on her heel and strode away after seeing Liara and Joker to the Normandy’s airlock.

Joker didn’t answer as they navigated around a particularly noisy batch of humans haggling over a dropped container of goods.  Armor and weapons mods and ammo had spilled when a large cargo-loader had dropped the large shipping container with Kassa Fabrication’s logo emblazoned in green on the side.

Thinking of the Commander brought the painful, broken message from the beacon to the forefront of her mind. She reeled, suddenly unsteady on her feet.

 _Not sure.  [Dyo]. The science will prevail. [Okto]. Three hundred sixty. Eve far from there. Seven hundred forty nine. [Endeka]. Do not go there. [Deka] [exi]. Planet of [ydronefoseon].  Strike blind [ktitores]. Protect the life. You destroy to them. It is not nowhere sure._

Liara sucked in a breath. Exhaled.  Her head felt heavy, her legs felt wooden.  She swallowed thickly, her tongue and throat not working properly.  She needed more time to meditate over the images that came with the message. They were too much.  Her temples throbbed as she tried to regain control of her senses.  She focused on the fallen container, on the logo, catching only snatches of heated conversations.  She realized with a start that she couldn’t understand them.  The images gradually faded from her mind’s eye again.

It appeared the humans weren’t haggling over the container at all. An argument? Her translator was universal and top-of-the-line; however, she had only downloaded the humans’ trade language from the Extranet. In the Traverse, that was all she had needed to communicate. Here though… They had been ashore fifteen minutes, and already she thought she heard at least seven different languages.

By the Goddess, how did they keep up with one another?  How had they expanded so quickly? She made a note to get the latest software and patches for her translator once they were on board their transport.

“What do you want?” the helmsman asked finally.  “Everyone calls me _Joker_ , by the way.” It took her a moment to realize that he was talking to her.  He was a little bit farther ahead than she was since she’d distracted herself by watching the humans bicker over who was at fault for the shipping container.

What had she been meaning to ask?

 _Oh. Right._

She scurried to catch up with him so that she would not have to yell over the sounds of voices projecting, cranes lifting, and robotic joints whirring. The buzz of the mini mass effect generator in Joker’s leg braces was soothing to her senses amongst the hubbub of the shipping docks; the images were completely gone by the time she spoke. “I do not know what the Commander was talking about when she said to be careful of the _Em Peas_ ,” she told him. "The soldiers?"

“MPs,” he replied. He stopped briefly, leaning on his crutches, and looked over at her. It was difficult to discern his expression because of the strange hair covering the bottom half of his face. “Military Police personnel.”  He gestured vaguely at the gruff-looking soldiers before putting his hand back on his crutch.  “Don’t give them an excuse to throw your ass off the station. Aliens are exactly welcome here.”

Confused, Liara stared at him. “But I have not done anything.”

He shrugged – at least she thought it was a shrug. “Yeah, well. We’re kind of insulated types, us humans.”

“Would it not be easier to integrate?” she asked. Out of habit, she ran a finger across the darker coloring of her brow.

He made a growling sound, maybe it was grunt, and moved away using his crutches to propel him along.  Liara wondered how long it took him to learn to navigate using such devices.  He was very good at keeping his balance.  “We can’t even ‘integrate’ amongst ourselves, Dr. T’Soni.”

His point was punctuated when a yellow cargo-loader barged past, the operator paying no mind to pedestrians. The helmsman said nothing, watching the loader move away, the skin pinching between his eyes, the tufts of hair above his eyes slanted into the expression Liara thought was a frown. There were shouts from workers and other pedestrians along the exosuit’s path as humans dodged the machine’s legs.  Someone yelled in galactic a colorful curse about the operator’s questionable parentage.

Oh, _of course_ , the translator had to pick _that_ up, she thought, irritated.

“Those things walk like chickens,” Joker complained with a shake of his head.  Liara knew that chicken was a type of meat that the humans ate -- and rumor had it: everything they ate tasted like it -- but she’d not bothered to research what the animal looked like.  The loader walked like any other mech she had seen, so she said nothing.  She made another mental note: _Look up the animals called chickens_.

They continued along the docks looking for the bay.  Needing to get to the deck above, they took an elevator.  Thankfully, the elevator was devoid of people.  The strange stares she was getting from almost everyone was beginning to claw at the edge of her already jumbled nerves.  She stepped closer to Joker, the hum of the generator in his leg braces calming her somewhat.

“Did you see the Commander’s vision?” Joker asked when the doors had closed.

The sudden question startled her, her eyes darting to his.  Gone was the hidden, unreadable expression.  He was frowning at her. Anger radiated off him.

“Yes.”

“Did you hurt her to get it?”

She shook her head. “Of course not.”

He studied her a moment; the anger seemed to subside. “Ash seemed to think you did.”

“I’m sorry: Ash?”

“Gunnery Chief Williams.”

“Oh.” _Her._ “The melding took a lot out of both of us,” Liara said, not knowing exactly how to explain. Shepard had a very strong will. Syncing their nervous systems long enough to extract the images -- _By the Goddess those images!_ \-- had been difficult at best. It had become a battle of wills. Shepard had no concept of _relaxing_. Liara was still confused as to how Shepard had managed to read Liara's thoughts. She hadn't _meant_ to push that hard. Goddess, how _embarrassing_!  She didn't know if explaining that it had been her first meld would make either she or Shepard ( _or her crew_ , a voice in the back of Liara's mind added unhelpfully) feel any better about the debacle. “I would never intentionally hurt Commander Shepard.”

“Your mom is traipsing across the galaxy with a rogue Spectre and a geth army,” he stated, eyes narrowed.

She looked at her feet, her mouth turned down. “I do not understand any of this,” she told him, looking back up at him.  “Benezia was always an advocate of peace.”  His expression remained stern.  She swallowed the lump in her throat.  “What more do you wish for me to say, Joker?  I have no idea why she would follow Saren. Especially since he has openly attacked a human colony with his geth followers.”

“ _Three_ colonies,” he corrected her, moving away and taking with him the pleasant hum of his generator. “Four systems in the Armstrong Cluster were overwhelmed last month and three more colonies have gone silent since we picked you up.  It’s a full-blown war. Casualties are in the tens of thousands right now.”  He set his crutches aside. Leaning against the wall, he massaged his forearms where the pads of his crutches had rubbed the area raw.  _Humans are so… pink. Even the darker-complexioned ones._ “And the Council hasn’t done shit to help us." He looked up at the elevator's ceiling. "How are we supposed to ‘integrate’ if we don’t get help when we need it?  How many more have to die before they even notice us?”

Liara winced. She had not realized the humans’ side of things. Were they that much of a threat to galactic stability that the Council was doing nothing?  Had the Krogan Rebellions truly scared them that much?  “The Council can only do so much,” she offered. “I do not know what else to tell you.”  She did not know how much he knew of the Rebellions or the Rachni Wars.  The humans she had met on expeditions had known next to nothing unless they were treasure hunters.  Those particular ones had not lasted long against her biotics when they had attacked her.

“Dr. T’Soni, it doesn’t matter.” He gazed at her. “They were rhetorical questions anyway.”

“Oh.” Not knowing what else to say to him, she awkwardly told him. “Joker, you may call me Liara.”

* * *

Normandy’s decon chamber itched just as much as it always did. The UV light passed over their skin, baking away the microbes, the venting system disinfecting their bodies, their clothes, their hair.

“Vyrnuus had it in for me after that,” Kaidan said as he and Shepard waited for the airlocks to disengage. The ache was beginning to subside from his shoulders. “He cut corners, pushed hard.” He shook his head, memories barreling to the surface. He wet his lips. “I mean, you either came out a superman or a wreck. And a lot of kids snapped. A few died.”

Shepard nodded. “I have the list,” she said. She met his eyes. “We can skip it if you need to.”

“I’m thirty-two, Commander,” he said with a shake of his head and looking away. “You don’t serve as long as I have without coming to terms with stuff like that...or yourself. I’ll read it.”

They were silent a moment before he shrugged and told her what was bothering him. It had been bothering him ever since Luna. He should have brought it up before now. “The point of all this – I guess – is that when you cut corners, it’s not always obvious who pays for it.”

Rahna paid for it. He paid for it. All the kids that had snapped or died paid for it. Vyrnuus paid for it in the end. Vyrnuus had made him into who he was. But the cost had been high.

“So why are you telling me this?” Shepard asked, concern and confusion scribbled in a line across her forehead. “Are you saying I’m cutting corners somewhere?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m saying—“ Hell, what was he saying? Yeah, he’d wanted to talk about what had happened on Luna and Therum, and he’d wanted to talk about Jump Zero, but things were blurring into a tangled mess now that he was discussing it out loud. He took a controlled breath, decon’s venting system playing havoc with his senses.

The cost of going after Saren would probably be just as high as the price he’d paid learning under Vyrnuus. The decisions Shepard would have to make… the ones she’d already faced were big. He couldn’t just sit around and let her become another Vyrnuus. He didn’t want to lose her.

More importantly, he didn’t want to be the one pulling the trigger this time.

“It’s probably inevitable that we’ll have to,” he told her in lieu of telling her about what he’d done to Vyrnuus. Damn it, he cared about her. More than he should. “And when that happens, I want to help you, Shepard.”

An eyebrow rose. “That’s not the appropriate way to address your commanding officer, Lieutenant.”

Kaidan blinked. _Shit._ “I wasn't speaking to you as my commanding officer, ma'am.” Had he misread her? He stared at her. “I don't want to send any bad signals. Just working on what I picked up. You tell me if I'm going too far.”

She was quiet a moment, watched him. He licked his lips, nervously.  With a pang, he realized that maybe she only saw him as an underling, just another grunt, just her detail commander.  But instead of finding a way out of the conversation, he plowed right ahead. “Look. When someone important to you is up on a ledge, you help them.  Keep them from making mistakes better left to a kid.”

Shepard continued to watch him, confusion written on her face.

“Lot of static on the comm, Alenko,” she told him at last.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to dump any baggage, ma’am.” She was accusing him of sending mixed signals? What the hell?

“We’re marines,” she told him after a quiet moment of contemplation. “All we have is baggage.”  She kicked her sea bag at her feet. “We just have different labels for it all.”

“Lay it on me,” he offered.

He hoped to hell it wasn’t the stress of command catching up to her.  He wondered if… _connecting_ with Dr. T’soni had somehow affected her.  Garrus was right, it had been consensual, but he doubted Shepard was pleased about the public display.  She was only open to certain degree.  “Open door policy” didn’t mean “let’s have sex in the comm room.” He wondered how Shepard could be so calm about what had happened during the debrief.  Of course, she was also the type to try to work during an operation, his mind supplied unhelpfully. And who knew, maybe… maybe there was something there between the asari and the commander.  The idea didn’t sit well with him at all. It ate away at his heart piece by piece.

She looked at him, studying his features under the Normandy’s decon light. He felt like a bug under a microscope. She opened her mouth to speak. Decon whirred to a stop and the locks disengaged with a hiss.

“Logged: The Commanding Officer is ashore,” Normandy’s VI chimed. “CMC Vassiliadis has the deck.”

“I might take you up on that offer, Kaidan,” she stated, gripping her sea bag. “Right now, we’ve got work to do.”

“I’m here for you,” he told her as they exited the ship, he took Shepard’s bag from her and slung it over his shoulder. Garrus, Hardy, Tali, Wrex, and Fredericks were waiting for them on the dock.

As they looked for a transit to take them from dry-dock to the shipping docks, Kaidan took a moment to marvel at the view. He never missed the opportunity to look. The view never ceased to amaze him. He looked out at the ships coming in and going, at the repair drones and satellites working over the ships and tugs. The Czarnobóg Fleet Depot was in a halo orbit at Berstuk’s sun-earth L1 Lagrange Point. From the dock, they could see Berstuk and its ring system in the distance. Roughly the size of Saturn with a similar ring system and over three dozen moons, the hydrogen-helium gas giant was a pale yellow-green because of the trace amounts of sulfur and chlorine in its atmosphere. The ring system was varied in colors of tan, white, and cream. The closest moon, Ingemann, was an oddly-shaped gray rock roughly two kilometers wide full of craters from impacts over the millennia.

Shepard joined him at railing for a moment.   “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

He nodded, the anxiety from earlier easing away. “I remember the first time I set foot on Luna and looked up at Earth,” he found himself saying, a smile finding its way across his lips. “Most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We were at a layover before heading out to Jump Zero. They had a system malfunction with the ship we were taking and had to do some repairs.”

“Your parents never took you to Luna?”

He snorted. “You say that like going to space is cheap.”

Shepard shrugged, or tried to and ended up wincing and reaching for her injured shoulder. “My father was a geophysicist; my mom was a marine xenobiologist. We travelled all the time before they were offered jobs on Mindoir.  Dad said it was a dream job. From what I remember neither one of them had liked Demeter or Eden Prime. I think we even lived on Bekenstein for a time. Lots of lights.”

“When did you move to Mindoir?”

“I was six. My sisters were three and two. My brothers hadn't been born yet." She smiled sadly.

“Big family,” he said.  His cousins were fun, but he wondered what it would be like to have siblings.

The sad smile didn’t fade. “The first of five.” She sounded proud of her status. “Two sisters, two brothers.”

She stepped away from the railing when the transit arrived, looking at Berstuk a final time before boarding.  Kaidan followed, more questions coming to mind as he boarded behind her and looked around for a seat.  The only available seat was right next to her.

He shoved their bags in the overhead compartment. “You have an L3 implant,” he said as he sat down. His leg brushed hers. “Were you exposed in-utero?”

Shepard shook her head. “Secondary exposure from an explosion over our colony when I was fourteen.  I was one of thirteen teenagers that suddenly could break our own bones when we got angry.” She gave an unladylike snort. “Lot of broken bones that first year.  Then the Raid happened about two years later. I’m the only biotic left from Mindoir.”

He did the math in his head, his breath catching in his throat when he realized the year. “You were exposed right after Conatix shut down?”

She nodded. “I think so.  Quite a coincidence, huh?”

Kaidan gritted his teeth. _Yeah. I’ll say._   No one could prove ship drives were intentionally detonated over the colonies, but, damn, how was that for a fluke?

“How did your family wind up on Mindoir?  It’s just a farming colony right?”

“There are gold, silver, and platinum mines, too,” she told him.  “My mother’s parents were farmers in Riverside, Iowa. When colonization opened up for Mindoir, they jumped at the chance to farm there.  It’s one of the few worlds with enough nitrogen in the soil to feed Earth plant life. After they found how rich the soil was, they moved the whole rest of the family there and sold their Earth farms. Dad got on a mining company as a consultant. Mom was a consultant for a fishery.”

“It’s hard to picture you as a farmer,” he admitted.

She laughed. “If it makes you feel better, my grandparents on my dad’s side were accountants.”

The transit came to a stop and the doors opened for them to exit.

While the Citadel was packed with aliens of all sizes, the Fleet Depot was seemingly devoid of them. The ones Kaidan did see were viewed with suspicion. Wrex, Tali and Garrus were getting strange looks as they walked them to their transport. The aliens, minus Dr. T’Soni, were going back to the Citadel to hunt for clues to Saren’s next move. Shepard’s rank only went so far here; even her Spectre status among humans was looked on with some doubt – they found that out going through customs.  And besides, there were very few restaurants that served dextro-amino food. Wrex and Garrus both had contacts at the Citadel. Kaidan wasn’t sure what Tali was going to do. Fredericks and Hardy were going to go with her to “keep her out of trouble.” Keeping Tali out of trouble was just as easy to do as keeping Garrus and Wrex from fighting. Kaidan wanted no part of it. The less he knew the better, he was sure of it.

“I’ll keep them out of trouble,” Tali assured him as the five boarded their transport, a civilian Athabasca-class freighter called the MSV Screaming Eagle. The ship’s captain was a retired Marine drill instructor named Mack Slaughter. He was a tall man with large, beefy arms, a bald spot, mustache, small beady eyes, and gruff expression. He stood on the loading bay, looking imposing. Kaidan saw at least two turians among the crew that milled about – a good sign.

“Commander Shepard?” a woman asked from behind them.

Shepard and Kaidan turned to look.  The woman was thin and reedy with deep bronze skin, high cheekbones, and dark hair that was chopped just below her ears and slicked down with oil. A cam drone floated to her left. “Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, Westerlund News.”

Kaidan found he couldn’t stop staring at the large mole on her forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geek stuff:  
> Berstuk – an evil Wendish god  
> Bernhard Severin Ingemann – a Danish poet who published a thesis on the Slavic/Wendish god pantheon. (His works are located on Project Gutenberg, for those interested.)  
> The Prothean message was achieved by writing a simple paragraph in English and translating it to Greek and back again a few times using an online Babel Fish translator.  
> I could resist neither the Star Trek nor G.I. Joe references. ;)


	46. Eidolon

The MSV Alcmene was a small Kowloon-class freighter. As Shepard and Alenko made their way into the docking bay, a bald dock worker used a large yellow exo-suit cargo loader to fill the Alcmene's cargo hold with medical equipment. The thud of the exo-suit's footfalls echoed against the cylindroid bay's walls. Shepard slowed her pace and looked up at the ship and its multi-compartments. Two workers were inspecting crates with Sirta Foundation logos. A few others were hunched over data pads. Several others, wearing bulky civilian environmental suits, were making repairs to the hull, multi-colored wiring exposed haphazardly as they labored over maintenance.

To Shepard it looked like people and objects were strewn about everywhere, no order. Complete and utter chaos. Like someone had shoved corn nibblets into her mashed potatoes and gravy or rearranged her sock drawer without permission. Her fingers twitched to begin pointing out the grievances and giving orders to shape up and toe the damn line. _And_ stack _those goddamn crates!_ Did civilians have no concept of neat rows?It took considerable effort to keep her mouth closed. A muscle ticked in her jaw betraying her inner turmoil. Beside her, Alenko grunted at what she assumed was his response to the attack on their organized lives.

Kowloon-class ships didn't have any armaments to defend against privateers. The ship looked just as beat-up as the one on Feros, which didn't help Shepard's feelings of unease – especially not after being confronted by that Westerlund news reporter. _("The eyes of Earth are on you, Shepard. Don't let us down.")_ She mentally shook her head, clearing it. Scanning the workers with her odd-colored eyes, she looked for the captain, a woman named Hilary McIntosh. Shepard hoped to identify her by clothing, but thus far wasn't having much luck. _Civvies._ Had she really lived like this at one point in her life? How had her parents _managed_?

A tall, lanky woman saw the two marines and made her way over with a slight limp in her gait. Dressed in a khaki overall ensemble, the only thing that made her stand out against the rest of the workers was her light-colored head of hair. She wore her wavy, flaxen hair in a thick tail on the back of her head. Shepard started at the hair color, catching herself quickly. The last she'd seen a human with fair hair had been on Feros. Before that, the last blonds she knew had been Jenkins and Gerry. She wondered briefly if she was cursed to know fair-haired people who perished before their times. Shepard refused to count Carpenter on her list of "Blonds I Know" – Carpenter had been known to dye her hair green or pink on a whim so Shepard doubted Carpenter was a true blonde. And Carpenter was too damn lucky for her own good.

"Commander Shepard, Lieutenant Alenko," the woman welcomed them with a large smile, her blue-gray eyes glittering. She reached out and gripped Shepard's good hand. "Captain Hilary McIntosh. It's an honor to have you on board."

"Captain." Shepard nodded her greeting and set about finding out what the accommodations would be like. She studied Alenko out of the corner of her eye as he greeted the captain. His profile was sharp and confident, one corner of his mouth pulled into a slight smile, the lines about his eyes creasing. Shepard's heart thudded, out of place a second, before it settled to its normal rhythm. He put down his bag, adjusted Shepard's bag on his shoulder, and shook McIntosh's hand.

" _You tell me if I'm going too far."_

She swallowed. She had wanted to tell him that he wasn't going too far, but that was a damned lie. What had she been thinking by flirting with Alenko and encouraging him to begin with? First and foremost, there were regs. She'd made the mistake of breaking them once before. Splitting with Gerry had been painful. Casbin had reopened old wounds and created others that had yet to heal. _Gerry and his team._ _Le Souef. Guo_. _Dawson._

 _God._

 _Dawson._

Thinking about it was still a raw, lancing pain. Shepard felt certain Liara had shared the memory with her, churning it around like drift wood in a storm. She hadn't figured out how she felt about that or if she was supposed to feel anything. Dr. Chakwas was right, she knew Liara better than she knew Alenko at the moment and the asari only been on board two weeks and had almost no interaction with her. She gritted her teeth.

The Commander took a few calming breaths, compartmentalizing to examine and speak to Liara about later and keeping her face a façade of neutrality. Her eyes scanned the chaos without really seeing anything as Captain McIntosh gave them permission to board entering with them through the cargo hold and moving past the stomping yellow cargo loader.

Shepard had told Alenko about her family. _Ugh. Why?_ Talking about Mindoir just wasn't something she did. As the years had accumulated since the Raid, the sharp pain in her chest had subsided to a dull ache, but it was still there. It would never go away. Opening up to him hadn't helped or made her feel any better about it, but he'd been curious and she'd wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

Damn it. She liked being around Alenko, talking to him, hearing his opinions. She wasn't about to deny that. He was a good soldier, a good leader. The control he had over his biotics was enormous. She suspected it had something to do with Vyrnuus. More than what he had told her. Whatever had happened out on Jump Zero had burned him badly.

And what about Therum? Had she imagined the moment between Alenko and Williams?

She wondered if Gerry had gone through the same doubts before he'd finally given in and had asked her to dinner.

Why was she agonizing over it? Regs were regs. They were there for a reason. Getting involved with Alenko was an overall bad idea. Shepard couldn't afford to be distracted by romantic notions. Her control would crumble, not to mention her command. And what if something happened and she had to either leave him behind or he had to leave her behind? Shepard's already irritable mood took a nose dive. _I am_ not _losing another person on this damn mission._ There was too much at stake. They still had no clue as to how find the Conduit or where to even begin. Not to mention her heart could be on the line.

God. She didn't want to think about that at all. There were definitely bigger problems. Saren. Geth. Finding the Conduit. Stopping Saren from bringing back ancient machines to wipe out civilization. It was on them.

On her.

And besides, she didn't know how Alenko was going to react to the information Hackett had sent from the investigation. He trusted her now, but once he read the report, would he simply brand her a murderer of her squad like Internal Affairs had tried to do before the Admiral and Captain Anderson had backed her command decision?

The tour of the ship was brief. Kowloon-class freighters were designed with mass production in mind. Essentially, if one had seen the interior of one Kowloon-class, one had seen them all even if the modules that made up the ship were as customized as the Alcmene. One of the ship's modules had been converted strictly into living quarters with four small 'state rooms' for passengers. A mess hall and galley was across the corridor in another module. The module even contained a small rec room. The Captain's quarters were portside forward. The crew's quarters were starboard forward.

"We've got vids and stims," Captain McIntosh told them as she pointed out the rec room. "Exercise equipment. The passenger module has a central head."

"What about medical facilities, ma'am?" Alenko asked. "The Commander has a shoulder injury."

"We've got med kits stocked with medi-gel, anti-biotics and stimulants in the galley and a small AutoArt, but it's nothing as fancy as a medical bay on a military warship," McIntosh said. "We're do-it-yourselfers, so we rely heavily on the VI if someone gets injured enough to need the AutoArt."

Joker shuffled out of the room he'd claimed as his own. "Commander, they have leather seats on the stim unit!" Shepard shook her head. She was never going to get in a good stim now.

* * *

It was three days later when Shepard finally ordered Kaidan to review the data from the Admiral with her. The Alcmene had just begun discharging its core at a fuel depot in orbit around the grey hydrogen-helium gas giant. Four months on the Normandy had spoiled Kaidan. They still had about a seventeen hour flight to the nearest relay to Arcturus after discharging. The Normandy would have already been docking at Arcturus by now.

The comm chime pulled his attention away from a drool-inducing post-apocalyptic vampire crime-fighting musical vid starring two elcor, a quarian and a hanar. He stretched and answered, "Alenko."

"Lieutenant." Shepard's voice startled him and he sat up straight.

"Commander?"

"My quarters, please."

He swallowed and agreed, slipping on a shirt and tucking it in as he left his room. When he walked into her quarters, she was sitting at the room's only terminal, the image of a woman in Hahne-Kadar armor pulled up on the holo. As he neared the screen, he took in a breath of air. The woman looked familiar. So familiar that Kaidan felt uncomfortable. He knew her from somewhere. He studied the holo intently for a moment. The woman had long, wavy red hair, but her skin-tone belied her hair color, prompting Kaidan to believe she'd dyed her hair. Her skin was smooth and a few shades darker than his own bronzed-tan skin. Several scars were prominent on her face, an especially jagged one started on her forehead just above her right eyebrow and swept across the bridge of her nose to under her left eye. Her eyes were dark and fathomless, the outer edges tilted just enough to make him wonder if she was from one of Earth's Middle East or Western Asian countries or had the ancestry. Her face was long, lips lush.

"You know her," Shepard said finally. It wasn't a question. It wasn't an accusation. She merely made a statement.

Her words were calm enough that the hair on Kaidan's arms prickled. He looked at Shepard. She looked back. He sighed. "I can't place her, Commander. I feel like I should know her. She's familiar. Her eyes…" His eyes moved of their own volition back to the eyes of the woman in the holo. "Who is she?"

"My old squad mate," she replied.

"The one who attacked you?" Kaidan wet his lips. He'd seen this woman before. He wracked his brain, trying to force himself to remember. Had he served with her before? Was that why the Admiral had been adamant that he accompany Shepard? Was he supposed to give her advice? Or was he going to be testifying against her? The sudden thought made his blood run cold, and he swallowed. No wondered she'd backed down when he confronted her days ago. What an idiot he'd been. Embarrassed and somewhat irritated that the Commander didn't want to go over this any sooner, he took a breath and released it and crossed his arms protectively.

Shepard gestured for him to sit and propped her good arm up on the terminal's console, leaning her chin into her palm. She glared at the woman on the screen as Kaidan took a seat in the chair Shepard had arranged before his arrival.

The light of the holo flickered across her pale skin as she spoke, venom in her voice. "The one who attacked a group of unarmed civilians for no apparent reason."

"You intervened," he assumed, breaking her glare and drawing her attention to him. The look in her eyes unsettled him. He tilted his brow, looking at her uncertainly. "Didn't you?"

 _Not_ protecting civilians didn't sound like Shepard at all. Even on Eden Prime, when the directives had been to secure the beacon and ignore the civilians, Shepard had made sure the civilians they did encounter were safe before pressing on.

She nodded, her lids slipped down over odd-colored eyes in memory as she moistened her lips before speaking and meeting his gaze. "Not before she let off a singularity more powerful than anything I've ever seen and killed six of them."

 _Holy Hell_. That was a high body count for any type of L3 singularity he had ever heard of. Were they certain?

"Most L3s aren't powerful enough for singularities, Commander," he stated, his body rigid with tension, his brain fighting for an explanation. L3s didn't go crazy. They just didn't. L3s were stable because they couldn't amass the same amount of power L2s could and the L3 implant's wiring didn't interfere with the brain's electro- and neurochemical functions like the L2 implant did. Singularities took a powerful amount of control. It wasn't something the Alliance taught regularly unless it was Army SpecOps or Marine N training. Hypothetically, an L3 could do it. But to kill six people, even without armor or protection, would take a hell of lot of energy and training.

"She was an N and an L3 _R_."

He looked at Shepard sharply, drawing his hands into fists in lap. There had been thousands of kids in the BAaT program. He narrowed his eyes at her. "I didn't know everyone at Jump Zero, Shepard," he said, his voice edged with steel, defensive. "My little circle of friends wasn't all that big to begin with. Less than fifteen of us. By the time Vyrnuus—At the end of the program there were less than that."

"Kaidan," she said gently, sitting up and staring at him intently, "you really don't recognize her?"

He shook his head, trying to remember everyone in the little group that had formed around Rahna. He remembered Rahna, with her dark eyes ringed by thick lashes, dark hair and heavy eyebrows, and the way she would look at him from across the way as they said their nightly good-byes. _("See you in the morning, Kaidan?" "We saw each other this morning already." "Silly._ Tomorrow _morning." "Morning is good.")_ The memory made his heart catch inexplicably and focused his thoughts elsewhere. Rahna was gentle, quiet. She had had plans to become a chemical engineer once they graduated from the program. She had wanted nothing to do with the military.

There were other girls in the group. They'd feared Vyrnuus as much as Rahna had. None had attracted him like Rahna with her quiet strength. He listed off their names in his head and tried to remember the shape of their eyes, the set of their noses.

"I think I might need a hint, ma'am," he said finally as he drew a blank.

He couldn't shake the uneasiness that had settled in his gut. The woman had a wild look to her: battle-hardened with bleak determination shining in the muddy depths of her eyes. Who was this woman? Was she from a different circle, and he'd seen her in passing? It had been sixteen years since he'd seen anyone, and he'd been deliberate about not keeping up with any of the students since then and only focusing on maintaining control and maintaining his sanity. Jump Zero and Vyrnuus' death had nearly paralyzed him. It had taken a few years for him to even _try_ to use his biotics, the look on Rahna's face haunting him until she'd faded to a dull memory that could only be recalled with clarity during nightmares.

Shepard let out a breath of air. "Alright. So you don't know her. FleetCom thinks otherwise." He made to protest, but she held up a hand. "That's fine. It makes it easier if there are no attachments." Kaidan made a rude noise and crossed his arms petulantly. A suspicious line formed on Shepard's lips pulling taught the scar there.

"There are no attachments from BAaT, Commander," he assured her.

She gave a nod of approval and continued, "The best Intel can come up with is that her last name before she changed it to Jones was Mihaljević and –"

Kaidan gasped at the name, a sharp intake of recycled air. It couldn't… No. _God, no._

"Oh God," he whispered, his brows drawing together in an agonized expression as he stared intently at the woman in the holo.

 _The eyes._ The eyes _were_ the same, and he'd dismissed it at first glance. Something he'd thought he'd never do. How could he? _Holy Hell._

"It's _Rahna_."

The blood drained from Shepard's face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alcmene: Heracles' mother


	47. Luck of the Draw

Mom was always good at faking a smile. Her smiles, no matter faked or real, were always pleasant. She could ease into a smile of good will even if the recipient of good will was undeserving. Her lips would lift at the corners, her round face would glow, and the crow's feet at the edges of her brown eyes would pull taut. If needed, she could crank up the smile to a million credits and dazzle the recipient with straight pearlescent teeth.

The elder Williams faked such a smile so well that Ashley had gotten into a habit of studying her mother's face for that tell-tale twitch of her nose when her left nostril did an almost imperceptible flare every so often. It was so minute that none of the other Williams sisters had ever noticed and usually called Ashley crazy or weird or "what _ever_ , Ash" for bringing it up.

But judging Mom's mood was what the eldest sibling of the Williams clan did best –besides kill geth, memorize her favorite poems for instant recall when the time called for it, free-fall into atmospheres of gas giants by accident, and organize the Normandy's armory so well the quartermaster and requisitions officer had both written letters to the Naval promotion board recommending her, much to her chagrin, for a quartermaster rating (the OSDs were currently hidden within the depths of her locker under and or amongst four months of accumulated, yet vaguely organized, garbage).

Yes, Mom was excellent at faking her smiles. In fact, she was excellent all around at faking her _mood_ – unless she was angry. Then Ashley was very glad to be stationed Elsewhere Specifically and Away From Amaterasu In General, thank you very much. Angry Mom was not a pleasant mom. Angry Mom – God bless her heart –was a bitch.

As it was, Ashley sat at a public comm terminal in a long distance comm linkup staring at her mother's pert nose while simultaneously trying to pay attention to the conversation and get a feeling for Mom's mood. Going home to Angry Mom wasn't something she wanted to do. But so far, Mom had been nothing but chatty and pleasant about the whole thing. Ashley thought something was off about Mom's smile though and was determined to find out if she was Faking It. Luck would be that Mom wanted Mom Time and Sarah was staying with friends until Mom Time was over.

Every once and again the holo would flicker or Ash's eyes decided, God forbid, they needed to blink, and she had to start all over in balancing judging Mom's mood and paying attention to the words coming from Mom's mouth. But damn if her smile wasn't infectious even if Ash thought Mom was hiding something.

"I can't believe we get you for two weeks," Mom said as the holo flickered for the umpteenth time. Ash grit her teeth to keep herself from glaring at the holo and upsetting her mother. If Mom wasn't happy she was coming home, then Mom wasn't happy. There wasn't anything Ashley could have done about the timing. She was going home, damn it.

"It'll be nice to see everyone," she said with a smile of her own.

There. There it was! That little flicker of Mom's left nostril. Ashley _knew_ she wasn't going crazy!

She struggled to keep her smile pleasant and not look too smug in her finding.

"Abby won't be able to make it," Mom said, and then her smile faded, surprising the vaguely-smug smile right off Ashley's face. "She's gone to Earth. A fast packet flight from Earth will be too much for her to afford right now."

Ashley frowned, wondering when, if ever, Mom had been planning to drop that particular piece of news on her. And why hadn't Sar said anything? Sar usually told her everything. "Earth? When did she go to Earth? I thought she was enrolled at the Academy of Performing Arts on Terra Nova?"

"Oh, a few weeks ago," Mom said, worry stealing into her expression. "You know how flighty she can be sometimes – and don't you repeat me, Ashley," she added in a tone that brooked no argument. "She wants to be a famous actress in Hollywood, so she saved every last credit she could and just upped and moved. I've been meaning to tell you. It's just… it's been so hectic here. Sarah's in her last year of high school, you know, and she's signed up for everything the school has to offer in the way of extracurricular activities: Honor Roll, Who's Who, Homecoming Royalty, Galactic Honor Society…"

"Those things you don't sign up for, Mom," Ash told her.

"Soccer?" Mom asked, a well-groomed eyebrow lifted.

"Yeah, you've gotta sign up for that one."

Mom frowned and nodded, her opinion reaffirmed. "Well, she signed up for everything the school has to offer in the way of extracurricular activities."

Ashley chuckled and shook her head. "Oh Lord." A thought occurred to her. "Mom, does Abby have enough credits to live in Hollywood?" Travelling to Earth was expensive outside the military. Colonial Affairs usually regulated transit from the colonies to Earth. One had no luck if they weren't military personnel or merchants.

"I don't know, Ashley." She put the matter aside with forced good cheer and a minute flicker of her left nostril. "Bandwidth is almost at a maximum at this terminal, and there's a queue behind me. Sarah and I will meet you at the space port tonight." Before Ashley could say anything, she continued, "Oh! Would see about bringing some off-world junjun repellant? They're mating like crazy this year and local shops can't seem to keep their stores stocked. We're having trouble keeping them out of the house. I found a cluster of eggs under the housing unit yesterday."

"Yes, ma'am," Ash told her, the smile that had been forming freezing on her face.

 _Oh my God. Ew._

She was suddenly not looking forward to going home, and she was still suspicious that Mom's initial happiness to Ashley's sudden shore leave was an act. It was just her luck that it was fricken junjun mating season during the only leave she'd gotten in the last six months and was close enough to home that she wasn't penalized for the distance.

After saying her good-byes and logging off, she quickly found a shop that sold junjun repellant and purchased the maximum amount allowed by Alliance regulations. The last thing she wanted to find was a basketball-sized, blood-sucking space flea in her bed.

* * *

Winning a game of Skyllian 5 Poker required equal parts skill and luck. Winning against the humans and Garrus was not only satisfying, but damned fun.

Garrus seemed to be convinced that Tali was cheating somehow. He'd scanned the solid-state aerogel cards three times with his omni-tool after Tali showed her hand. Gun Dog re-examined his hand and eyed hers suspiciously. He'd dealt the cards.

Tali knew no one could see her face, but that didn't stop the huge grin from forming. She wanted to crow, "Got your credits! Got your credits! Quarians rule! Humans and turians drool! Woo!" but refrained from doing so lest she seem all the more suspicious.

"How did—" Gun Dog began but quickly looked at his hands when Garrus' beady blue eyes zeroed in on him. Tali's grin was beginning to hurt her face it was so wide. Gun Dog had stacked the cards using a program so easily hacked it was child's play – a quarian could hack it in her sleep given the right amount of wetware and cabling.

Garrus scanned Fredericks' omni-tool, his mandibles fluttering as he concentrated on hacking the system. Tali had made sure the program the human had used had been disabled and relocated to the junk folder under a false path name and extension so Gun Dog couldn't use it again. She'd even re-written the metadata by using a specialized quarian blinking code.

Hardy crossed his arms and looked back and forth between turian and human, then cast a look in Tali's direction. "You two really expected her not to count the cards in her head?" he asked in a tone that practically pointed to her and yelled: "Hell _ooOo_! Quarians can count without moving their lips. Duh."

Tali's smile quickly transformed into a glare as Garrus squawked indignantly and Gun Dog looked scandalized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For clarification: Abby is the "weird" Williams sister who likes corsets, big hoop skirts and fighting with swords.


	48. Catch-22

Kaidan sat back and rubbed his eyes with the pads of his thumb and forefinger.  Staring at data that made no sense was beginning to grate on his last nerve, and his eyes ached from staring too long at the various holos and data pads.  He let out a sigh and dropped his hands to his lap.

Everything he thought he’d known…

After the initial shock of realizing who had attacked unarmed civilians – _slaves!_ – Kaidan had asked to go over the information privately.  Shepard had looked like she had shot and killed an innocent civilian, and Kaidan had been too shocked and angry to do much more than study the data, but as the hours passed, his boiling rage at the situation had reduced to a simmer. The shock had settled to the pit of his stomach in the form of apprehension.

Six hours of digging through the report Internal Affairs had written up along with nearly eight gigs of supporting data, and he was no closer to finding out why Rahna had changed her name – no, her whole damned _identity_ – and snapped during a fairly routine raid than he had been when he first realized who it was that was staring back at him on the terminal in Shepard’s quarters.

The raid had been routine but it hadn’t been just a simple one. The Scorpions were first in during a raid on a major installation of a slaving ring run by a mostly batarian pirate gang called the Dark Talons within the Terminus Systems.  And most of the info on Rahna was missing, other than her real last name and the link to Conatix – and subsequently to Kaidan.

Conveniently missing.

He’d read the one hundred page report three times.  Shepard had defended herself against a mentally unstable _weapon_ after said weapon killed six people and promptly attacked the squad when they tried to interfere.  There hadn’t been a choice, though there were several instances within the document that seemed to implicate Shepard had a strong dislike for biotics.  Kaidan, even in a rage, had rolled his eyes at that.  Shepard appeared to share his views of biotic extremists: Take them down before “normal” biotics got any more bad press. In all of the instances of finger pointing, the author had included notes several weeks later retracting her statements. Apparently the Internal Affairs operative had no idea that Shepard herself was a biotic.  That, among several other inconsistencies, made Kaidan wonder just how accurate any of the report actually was.  Shepard’s own report even stated the Commander had had to use a biotic distortion attack against Rahna – _Jones_.

And that wasn’t how he wanted to remember Rahna.  He already had to remember her reaction to Vyrnuus, had to remember her reaction to Vyrnuus’ death because he had been too stupid and idealistic.  She had always been so gentle and charming.  Knowing how she died… Hell, knowing that she was _dead_ hurt just thinking about it.

Distortion attacks used undulating mass effect fields to shred objects.  Not all biotics could do them, and not all biotics _wanted_ to be able to do them.  Right now, Kaidan didn’t think Shepard would be able to execute one properly, not with her shoulder injury.  They didn’t take as much power or concentration as singularities, but the warping affect required the sync of the mutated nodes within the shoulder, forearm and hands.  The initial buildup of the field began in the shoulder and progressed from there.

Kaidan propped his elbow on the armrest of the chair and rubbed absently at the stubble on his chin.  An N4 sentinel but no records of her actually graduating the N program or attending boot camp, “Lieutenant Susan Jones” just seemed to appear one day with transfer paperwork from a fire team usually assigned to deep cover missions that infiltrated pirate gangs such as the Volpe Grisia or 10th Street Reds in the Local Cluster.  Somewhere along the line she had gotten L3R implant surgery.  And that was the rub.  If she had indeed snapped, then the surgery would have had to have taken place afterwards.  L3Rs were stable if they could survive the surgery; however, many ended up comatose or worse.  Kaidan had heard horror stories about surgeries that were done by fly-by-night “surgeons” who had no business operating, let alone operating on anyone’s _brain_.

There were enough red flags in the report that made him think she could have possibly been Black Ops. Had Rahna snapped or had she been placed in the Scorpions for a reason?  Kaidan wondered, idly, if that was only wishful thinking on his behalf. That his mind didn’t want to wrap around the fact that Rahna had changed her identity, quite possibly simply because she had hated her biotics, hated being an L2 because of what had happened on Jump Zero.

There were two training bases for the N marine program, one on Luna and one on Arcturus Station. It could have been that Rahna’s records were still under lock and key because of her deep cover missions, but there wasn’t a damn thing in anything Kaidan had read to indicate “Lieutenant Susan Jones” had existed prior to being assigned to Shepard’s team.  And Shepard had had to kill her.  There was no way to find out if she had really snapped or if she was Black Ops.

He swallowed, his eyes unwillingly travelling to the data pad with Jones’ image.  To the woman Rahna had become.  Had he…? He stopped that thought before it began with a shake of his head and stood up not bothering to study the image that was still on the screen.  It was bad enough that she’d never forgiven him for accidentally killing Vyrnuus.  Blaming himself for Rahna becoming an unstable L2 wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Making his across the corridor and into the galley, his stomach growled loudly reminding him to eat.  He fixed himself some chow, ate quickly without really tasting it and left, stopping in front of Shepard’s door.  The last time he’d seen her, he’d been short with her – unbecoming of a subordinate.

Raking a hand through his hair, he went over the possibility of her reaming him out for the lack of respect.  Kaidan thought he deserved it, would have reamed out one of his subordinates were it to happen to him, but… did he really want to face her right now?  He licked his lips and squared his shoulders.  It was best to get it over with now. Let her say how disappointed she was in his behavior and how it was going to affect his next Eval.

 _Damn._

His _Eval_.

Kaidan inwardly cringed.  He’d crossed two lines in less than a week.  “Flirting with CO” was high on the list of Things Not To Do in the Military. It went hand-in-hand with “Do Not Piss Off Your CO,” “Do Not Disrespect Superiors,” “Do Not Be A Dick And Get Your Squadmate Killed,” and “Do Not Fart (Loudly) At Award Ceremonies.”

What had happened to the level-headed staff lieutenant with the dozen special commendations?  Yeah, it was personal, but it was his own damn fault that he let it get that way instead of…

 _Shit._

He passed his hand over the biometric on Shepard’s door determined to set the record straight and fix things and hoped beyond hope there was some way to salvage the situation.

“Commander?” He stepped through the door as it slid open.

His eyes widened when Shepard moved quickly to make herself presentable, turning away from him without a sound.  It wasn’t that there had been anything to see – she had been unbuttoning her blouse and hadn’t gotten very far – it was that he’d walked in on her undressing to begin with.  The door had already shut behind Kaidan as he hurriedly apologized for intruding.

She shook her head, not turning to face him. “Don’t,” she told him shortly, seemingly struggling with her blouse.  Her injured arm and hand were fairly useless encased as they were in a sling, not to mention the nerve damage in her shoulder kept her from wiggling her fingers too much. She grumbled something under her breath that didn’t quite reach Kaidan’s ears. It sounded like she was cursing for having an open door policy, but it could have easily been her cursing him for opening the door.

“I’ll come back later, ma’am,” he told her.  Another line crossed, he thought morosely.  Three times in a week.

She gave a mirthless laugh and turned around, loosely clutching the top of her blouse together between the fingers and thumb of her good hand.  Only the top two buttons were unbuttoned, but it was enough to make her uncomfortable in his presence.  Her expression was that of annoyed tolerance.

“Check my bandages,” she ordered, surprising the hell out of him.  “I’m having… difficulties doing it myself.”  Shepard frowned.

Kaidan blinked, his mind immediately tuning into the task at hand.  He stepped forward. “When was the last time –“

“Dr. Chakwas checked them before we left,” she told him sitting in the chair closest to him as he gaped at her.  “We misjudged how long the flight was gonna be.  Thought I could hold out, but I’m not sure that that’s a good idea.”  She looked up at him, her face carefully blank.  “I cannot wait to be healed.”

“I hear that,” he told her.  He picked up the medical kit and rummaged through it for the ultrasound device in case she still had medi-gel patches under the bandages. “Any medi-gel?” he asked when he couldn’t readily find one.

“Just at the wound sites,” she told him. “Ultrasound’s on the table if that’s what you’re looking for.”

He grunted, looking at the device next to her.  She had already laid out everything she needed.  “Thanks.”

He couldn't check Shepard's bandages properly without completely removing her shirt.  Steeling himself, he turned to her and reached out.  She dropped her hand into her lap to allow him access.  Kaidan's fingers worked the buttons open exposing her dog tags as he worked his way down.  His brown eyes met her copper ones. The overhead lighting gave her eyes a golden green hue.

Swallowing, his eyes darted back to where his fingers had stilled.  "I, uh, I can't do much without taking off your shirt," he told her unnecessarily, then paused again when he realized that she wasn't wearing a bra.

"I'm sure you'll be professional about it," she quipped, laughter in her voice.

"If I can keep my eyes off your breasts, then yeah, I'd be..." He stopped talking, his fingers stilling on the button in between her breasts, when his brain actually caught up to what had spilled out of his mouth.

She stiffened.

His cheeks burned.

Oh. God.

He looked at Shepard's face again. She was blinking at him, her face flushed. Kaidan wanted to run to the airlock and space himself.

Oh. My. God.

"Might as well finish that sentence, Lieutenant," she told him after a moment of staring at him.

His face was on fire. He took a breath and obeyed her order. "Very professional," he said.

"Ma'am," he added belatedly.

She only nodded at him.

“In my defense,” he said sheepishly, “that was supposed to be a joke.”

“The punch line was a little dry,” she quipped, recovering, her face no longer as red.

“I did manage to dig myself into hole,” he said somewhat reluctantly.  “I seem to do that a lot around you, ma’am.”

To Kaidan’s horror, she raised an eyebrow and asked, “How deep will you bury yourself if you continue talking, Lieutenant?”


	49. Strange Transmission

Liara sat at the mess table of the MSV Alcmene moving the food on her tray around with her spork. Though her stomach protested, she found she couldn't bring herself to eat much. The humans had managed to find _eiza_ for her to add to the food, but it lacked the nutty taste of the asari-made ready meals she had become accustomed to on her digs and only served to turn the gray meat into lumps of red and violet instead of the lavender she was used to. She forced another bite, scraping the thick, gelatinous glob from the spork with her teeth and chewing slowly. The texture was sticky, squishy, and… and… _wrong_. Meat was supposed to be fragrant, chewy and nutty. She swallowed and took a drink of her water to wash it down.

How did humans eat this?

The sound of boots and scratching on the deck caught her attention and she looked up as she put the glass down. Joker had entered the module and was shuffling on his crutches to the ship's galley. He didn't acknowledge her, didn't even look over at her. She ignored him and went back to trying to eat. Human food, while palatable to asari, tasted so… funny, and the textures were just as varied as their colorings. Depending on what type you got, it was too spicy, not spicy enough, too squishy, or just plain – though she liked what the humans she encountered referred to as "fragrant" meat from a type of animal called _gaegogi_ which was the closest to any of the asari meats Liara could relate to.

Joker finished making his meal and sat at the table away from her. Liara looked up again, hiding her curiosity behind her glass of water. He poked at his food before shoving a bite into his mouth and chewing. She watched the way his jaw moved under the hair on his face, and she had the sudden notion of feeling his face as he chewed. What would that hair feel like under her fingertips? When he swallowed, the extra protrusion on his neck bobbed. _How strange._

"Take a holo, Liara," he said, startling her. "They last longer."

She put down her glass and cocked her head to the side. "A holo?" It was true. Holos were excellent for long-term study. Especially if the subject matter was too busy or too dangerous.

He looked up from his food at her then, a suggestion of annoyance hovered in his green eyes. "You keep staring at me. Take a holo, and then you can stare as long as you want and no one will notice."

Liara thought that was an excellent idea. Her omni-tool allowed for hi-res images. She wondered how many holos he would allow her to take.

Now, how did one ask to feel another's facial hair? Oh, why hadn't she finished that article of human social norms and mores?

"I have rarely had the opportunity for in-depth study of male humans," she told him, excited by the prospect. "Human hair is… interesting."

He blinked at her, surprised. "Sarcasm isn't your strong suit; is it, Dr. T'Soni?"

"Sarcasm?" Oh Goddess. "You were… joking?" _Not again._

Liara felt her face flush with embarrassment.

* * *

The airlock finished its cycle and hissed open revealing three people. The older man wore robes and leaned on a wooden staff. His dark-skinned face was weathered but his eyes were bright. The other two were younger: a fat man with reddish-brown hair and a willowy woman with mousy brown hair.

George Esposito took off his helmet, revealing his face, the left side drooping from a stroke last year due to complications with his biotic implant. He blinked at them, his heart pounding. The email had said to come, that this was a place of refuge. It was a place to come and be free of the trappings of the Others.  George didn't know what to expect when he'd finally said to hell with the bad press, the stares… the whispers.

"Welcome." The older man smiled warmly as he stepped forward, opened his arms and gave George a hug. "I am Father Kyle."

Relief, warm and soothing, calmed George's frayed nerves.  _Finally._

"You have travelled far," Kyle continued holding George at arm's length, his grip strong and possessive, as the man and the woman with eager smiles helped George with his bags. "Your journey stops here. You are safe here, my child."

It was strange to hear someone call him "child" – he hadn't been a child since before Jump Zero – but he ignored it for now. "No more running," he said, the right side of his face smiling. Saying it made him feel more powerful, more in control of his life than he had ever been. He'd never have to worry about how others felt about his abilities again, wouldn't have to turn on the news to another slanderous report about how biotics weren't human.

Kyle smiled, friendly, inviting. "No more running," he agreed. He stepped away to allow the others their greeting.

"I'm Olive," the woman said. She had a square chin and a wide mouth. George thought she had lovely blue-gray eyes. "This is Thomas." Thomas' bulbous nose dominated his meat features. Kind hazel eyes were hooded by the fat folds above his eyes.

"George," he said, reaching out to shake their hands. "George Es—"

"We don't do last names here," Father Kyle interrupted, a stern expression on his face. George blinked at him, suddenly frightened of the old man in front of him. Frightened he would reject him, turn him away. Kyle's face soon melted back into the warm smile. "There is no need for them."

George nodded. That made sense. He wasn't planning on leaving. It had taken everything to get here.

His wife, Amber, hadn't understood when he'd begun selling off things to pay for their journey to the Hawking Eta cluster.

"H-hawking Eta?" Amber had asked, color draining from her face. "That's… _George_. That's in the Five Kilo-Parsec Ring. We could _die_ just getting there."

They weren't going to die in transit. _He_ hadn't died. Amber would always be with him. Her family didn't understand. She was always there. _Whispering_.

Father Kyle, Thomas and Olive led George through the bunker, pointing out the kitchens, the bathrooms, the reading rooms. Each of the other biotics they encountered gave George welcoming hugs and greetings. By the time Kyle led George to his room, there were tears in George's brown eyes. Why hadn't he come before? Why hadn't Amber let him come before?

Olive stepped forward after Kyle and Thomas left. She reached up and wiped his face. "You took a risk coming here," she told him, "but Father speaks true. We _are_ safe here." She smiled and kissed his cheek. "Come sit with me at evening prayer."

Later that evening, after the prayer and family meal, two soldiers from the Alliance came. Olive was leading him to the reading room where she said she'd read him passages from Father Kyle's manifesto. George didn't know what to make of the soldiers. They were an odd pair: a tall, muscular man with curly black hair and pale gold skin and a small woman with spiked platinum hair. When the man said that the Alliance wanted to help Father Kyle, Olive pulled George away from the 'negotiators.'

"They want to take Father Kyle away from us," she hissed, her blue-gray eyes wide with fear. "We _need_ Father. He takes care of us. The Alliance _hates_ us. They refuse to help us, but Father loves us."

George blinked. "But I just got here," he whispered. He didn't want to go back. If they took Father Kyle away, they'd force all the biotics to go back or worse. He had nothing left in Citadel Space. Only Amber and her _whispering_.

"I will keep my people safe," Father Kyle declared after a moment of listening to the soldiers. He nodded to another man. George remembered his name was Edgar. Olive had told George not to anger Edgar, he followed Father everywhere. The big brutish man didn't hesitate to do whatever Kyle wanted of him. George gasped when Edgar crushed the man with a biotic maneuver George hadn't seen since Jump Zero. Bones crunched, blood spurted, ceramic shattered within the confines of the dark energy as Edgar compressed the field. The soldier hadn't stood a chance against the L2. The corpse looked like it had been stuffed into a compactor.

"Marquéz!" the remaining soldier screamed as two other biotics restrained her. "Oh, God, no!" She gaped at Father Kyle in disbelief before staring at the mangled body of her compatriot. "Andy."

George felt sick, bile rising in his throat. Had the soldier even been armed? The green and black armor, now covered in blood and meat and folded in on itself, hadn't looked like the standard issue from a garrison.

"You fucking murderer! Damn it, Major, we came in peace! _In peace!_ "

"The Butcher of Torfan knows no peace," Father Kyle spat at her. He looked at Edgar. "There might be others on their way. The Butcher had a full team of N Commandos. Take her to the interrogation room. Do whatever is necessary to get her to talk."

"How did you keep _us_ 'safe?'" the soldier demanded when they tried to take her away. "Huh? How did you? What did you do for us, you bastard?" Another biotic grabbed her as she struggled. "We were _your_ team! _Your team!_ We trusted you! We cleaned up your bullshit after you shot Bouchard! Then you flipped the fuck out on Torfan! Where's your conspiracy now? Huh, Major!"

It took four people to drag her from the room. Her accusations echoed against the walls. Father Kyle was silent, listening, then shook his head. He turned and raised his arms, the sleeves of his robes unfolding like wings.

" _This_ is what I'm protecting you from, my children," he told those who had gathered. "The Alliance would take me away from you."

George swallowed and looked at Olive who was shaking her head in contempt.

"This is why we had to come here. To get away from raving lunatics like that," she said, a thin vein of hysteria in her voice. "Father Kyle would never abandon us. Father loves us."

The others echoed her, bobbing their heads.

"Father loves us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gaegogi: dog meat in Korean (apologies if I've misspelled it)


	50. Carnivores

Arcturus Station was crawling with reporters. It had been a week since the bombing, and the media outlets had yet to get any definitive answers from the Alliance. They were like carnivores attacking prey. Shepard was bombarded with questions just as soon as they disembarked the MSV Alcmene. Liara made a noise of discontent and shifted behind Shepard. Joker, who had been on edge the entire voyage, tried to maintain a look of boredom. Kaidan could see the cracks around the edges.

The Commander held up a hand to the reporters' questions. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, loud enough that those standing near the back of the crowd could hear her. "You more than likely know more than I do about the situation. I'm not here because of what happened."

"Then why are you here?" one of the reporters asked as Shepard began to walk away.

"I may be a Spectre," she said, looking at the man, "but I'm also an Alliance officer. I'm here to turn in my reports."

Another reporter threw out a question. "Couldn't you do that from your ship?"

Shepard snorted at that. "Between you guys and the normal traffic, you've effectively blocked communications to the system." She turned and glared at them. "Congratulations."

Some of the reporters looked sheepish – Kaidan knew those were the FNGs and Shepard could walk right over them – however, most of the reporters looked unimpressed with Shepard's sarcasm. Those were the pros. They were the ones to watch out for. _Carnivores_.

"What happened to your arm?" someone yelled out as Shepard tried to push her way through the crowd.

"Geth sniper," she answered. "It ate a grenade for its efforts. Excuse me." She shouldered her way through with her good shoulder. Kaidan was right behind her, pushing Liara along in front of him. He stood to the side so Joker could pass. They met eyes a split second. The helmsman's eyes were like ice.

"Almost there," Kaidan assured him quietly. Joker gave a grunt and used his crutches to push through the crowd.

"Where is the SSV Normandy?" asked the nearest reporter Shepard was trying to push aside.

"In dry dock undergoing repairs to one of her classified systems," Shepard told them. "There was a malfunction while running maneuvers in the Traverse. She's still working the kinks out. No one was injured, but we don't want it to happen again. Now, if you'll excuse us. The Commandant of Fifth Fleet is expecting us."

The reporters erupted in questions upon that statement. One of them pushed a mike under Kaidan's nose.

"Is it true Commander Shepard has aliens aboard the Normandy?"

"I can't comment on our crew roster, ma'am," Kaidan replied. "You'll have to go through your regular channels to obtain a copy."

"The roster doesn't say what species they are," the reporter groused.

"It's a human ship," Joker spoke up, his voice clipped in barely-controlled anger. "Why would the roster have to specify the species?"

"Are you a member of the Normandy crew?" a reporter asked Liara.

"My name is Dr. Liara T'Soni. I, I am a… Prothean expert," Liara said, her eyes darting to and fro between the reporters and Shepard. She blinked at the cameras nervously. "Commander Shepard… saved my life from… from the geth."

"Dr. T'Soni? Little Wing?" someone called and the blue of Liara's face paled, her eyes widening. Kaidan made himself a mental note to look up the phrase. There were calls of "Dr. T'Soni" and "Little Wing," and accusing questions about Dr. T'Soni infringing on hanar sovereign rights that had Kaidan blinking in bafflement.

"What's a known Prothean tomb raider doing with the first human Spectre?"

"I am not a, a _tomb raider_ ," Liara spat hotly. Scowling, she turned and faced the inquisitor. "I'm an _archeologist_. I'm trying to link cycles of extinction… of, of galactic scale. The Prothean extinction is only one of many over the course of the lifetime of our galaxy. The geth attacked me at my excavation site. Commander Shepard happened to have been investigating in the area and rescued me from certain death."

"Are you Shepard's alien lover?"

Liara put a hand to her head. "Oh, Goddess."

Shepard reached back and pulled Liara away from the reporters and whispered fiercely in her ear. Liara ducked her head, nodding. When another reporter made to ask a question, the asari shook her head. "I'm sorry. No more comments," she told her. The questions didn't stop.

By the time they reached the elevator, the questions had become ludicrous. The MPs at the elevator had their hands full trying to keep the reporters back.

Liara shook her head in wonder as the doors shut and Shepard programmed the floor into the elevator's interface. "Human reporters are just as bad as asari reporters."

"Welcome to the limelight," Shepard said drily. She stood as best she could in parade rest.

"Carnivores," Kaidan remarked. She gave an unladylike snort and rolled her eyes in the affirmative.

"Was it like this before, ma'am?" he asked. "After Terra Nova, I mean."

She nodded. "Didn't have a blue alien babe with me last time. Can't wait for the spin on this," she said, her voice dripping in sarcasm.

"You… you're enjoying this?" Liara asked, appalled. Kaidan opened his mouth to explain sarcasm but Shepard beat him to it.

The Commander's response made his jaw drop. "I haven't had a private life since before Akuze. Might as well have some fun."

At Kaidan and Liara's wide-eyed looks, her lips quirked and she added, "Relax. I was just kidding."

Joker laughed for the first time since learning about the bombing.


	51. Vodun

Admiral Steven Hackett rubbed tiredly at the bridge of his nose then looked over at his assistant, who rolled his eyes, then back at the FTL communications array in the middle of his office. Ambassador Donnel Udina's visage remained unchanged except for the occasional flicker of the projection. The Ambassador's receding hairline accentuated the odd shape of his head and the bushiness of his graying eyebrows as they all but formed a "V" in the middle of his forehead. His thin lips were curled into a sour line as he glared what Steven assumed to be Udina's version of daggers.

The Admiral knew that Donnel wasn't going to back down. Donnel hadn't gotten to his position by backing down. If Steven had been any number of weak-willed diplomats, Udina might have come across intimidating, maybe even imposing – if Steven gave him that much credit. (He didn't.) But then, the Admiral hadn't gotten to his position by backing down either.

The current impasse was just one annoyance of the day. And the day was young. Hackett didn't have time for this bullshit. His schedule was full today – as it was most days. There was an Alliance Forces Decorations Advisory Committee meeting in thirty minutes wherein the Committee would discuss the current short list of those who deserved the Star of Terra (among other awards). After that, his assistant had scheduled him lunch with the Defense Minister to discuss troop mobilization to colonies hard hit by the geth. Then he and his staff were supposed to finalize operational areas for Task Force 123, 492 and 321 in an effort to scale back civilian casualties as the geth encroached on human territories within the Attican Traverse – he wished his assistant hadn't scheduled the Defense Minister today, and he couldn't cancel; Bill was just as busy as Steven was. And finally he was scheduled to make an appearance at a press conference later announcing the increased defenses for human territories within the Attican Traverse.

Colonial Affairs was distraught that official colonization had dropped four percent since Parliament had officially declared war on the geth. It didn't help that a large percentage of those potential colonists were disgruntled with the Alliance and were looking to private, nongovernment-sanctioned companies to fund colonies with no Alliance ships within the clusters. Dissidents were moving to clusters like the Shadow Sea, but Horizon was an established human colony with over six hundred thousand residents, and though they had refused a garrison, the cluster's prime mass effect relay was located in-system. It was the smaller colonies that Colonial Affairs was shitting bricks over, like New Canton and New Benin with less than three hundred thousand residents, no garrison, and no mass effect relay in the system. Places that just screamed, "Look! No Garrison! The Alliance doesn't love us!"

"We should have sent someone without history with the Major," Hackett insisted again. There were times for diplomacy and there were times for going in guns blazing. Sending Marquéz as negotiator instead of a team to raid the compound had been the Ambassador's idea, and he'd gone over Hackett's head to get it done. Now without contact from Marquéz within forty-eight hours, they were left wondering if the team was dead or had joined dissident biotics.

"Shepard would have been the better candidate," Hackett continued. "Her negotiation skills are above average. She has a real knack for bullshitting her way into and out of things." She also had a real knack for blowing shit up, but the Ambassador more than likely already knew that, so Steven didn't add that to his rebuttal.

"Shepard is already a political nightmare," the Ambassador argued, throwing up his hands in irritation, confirming Steven's suspicions that the Ambassador knew of Shepard's demolitions prowess. "The Council questioned her motives on Feros."

"Of course they did. They'll question anything that concerns human interests, Ambassador," Hackett replied. "The rogue Spectre and his second in command were there. The asari, Shi'ala, confirmed it. Hell, most of the population of Zhu's Hope confirmed it."

"Has there been anything concrete?" Udina asked tersely. "Any video or audio footage?"

Hackett shook his head. "No, but the asari confirmed that Saren, a _turian_ , has the ability to mind-control an asari matriarch and her followers."

"The asari was and probably still is one of Saren's followers," the Ambassador scoffed. "They won't believe a word she says. Not without definitive proof. Unfortunately, traumatized colonists don't sway the Council very far."

"A turian with mind-control abilities looking for a way to annihilate organics? You don't find this information alarming, Ambassador? "

"I find this information unbelievable, Admiral. As should you. A turian with mind-control abilities?" Donnel shook his head. "This is something right out of a science fiction story. It's obvious this asari is just trying to find someone to blame for attacking Commander Shepard."

The Ambassador paused, crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. It seemed to highlight his oddly-shaped head. "Shepard has passed her last psychological evaluation, has she not?" His accented tone held a challenge.

"She's not stressing under command," Hackett assured him meeting Donnel's challenge head on with a tone and a glare that brooked no argument. "She knows what she's doing. She's gathering intel on the Conduit and the Reapers and hunting a rogue Spectre while fighting his geth army."

"I don't believe she should be pursuing this Conduit or the Reapers, Admiral," Udina stated firmly. "The Council ordered her into the Traverse to hunt Saren and bring him to justice. If she goes on a tangent; they could label her rogue."

"And I don't believe I asked your opinion, Ambassador," Hackett stated just as firmly. "Shepard's the best we have at the moment. See to it that her reputation with the Council remains that way." He cut the feed just as Donnel's expression changed from contempt to shock, and then the Admiral turned to his assistant. "Has Commander Shepard arrived yet?"

"Yes, sir. The Commander, Lieutenant Alenko and the asari, Dr. Liara T'Soni, are staying at a hotel in the Mugi-boshi Ward. Lieutenant Moreau appears to be staying at his mother's apartment."

"Shepard brought the Matriarch's daughter here?" Steven scratched his chin absently as his assistant nodded. T'Soni must be more important than they originally thought. Shepard wouldn't have risked a public spectacle. Alien merchants were common, but were still considered anomalies.

"How did Moreau take the news?"

"Not well, sir."

"No, I imagine he didn't."

His assistant studied the data pad that seemed to be permanently affixed to his hand. "We should leave for your luncheon with the Defense Minister, sir."

It was days like today that Admiral Hackett really missed his fighter.

 _Things were so much simpler then._

* * *

The woman smelled like a distillery and looked like she'd been put through hell - graying hair matted, smoky-green eyes glassy. It didn't stop Joker from making a small noise in the back of his throat and throwing his arms around her, crutches dropping to the ground.

"You still want us to stay?" Shepard asked when Joker turned around from giving his mother a hug. He rubbed at his eyes, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. The relief was evident not only on his face but his stance as well.

"Stay?" Joker's mother glared at both Shepard and Joker. "I'm not dead yet, Jeff," she said angrily and cast a suspicious glance at Liara. Shepard felt herself bristle. "And there's no way in hell I'm harboring aliens in this house. You can keep your fetishes elsewhere."

"Jeezus." Joker ducked under his Alliance-issued cap. "I'm not sixteen anymore, Mom," he mumbled.

"Hotel it is then," was all Shepard said, reminding herself that not everyone was on the front lines, not everyone interacted well with aliens. Not everyone was in ship shape. She forced a smile on her face, careful not to look past the woman to the mess of a home behind her, and held out a hand for the woman to shake. "It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Moreau."

"I'm sure," Joker's mother scoffed. "I'm divorced. There is no Missus Moreau." She crossed her arms leaving the Commander no choice but to retract her hand.

Joker looked mortified. "Mom," he stage whispered, "that's my commanding officer. Please, play nice."

"You sold out the human race, Commander Shepard." His mother didn't seem to know how to "play nice." She cast another glance at Liara then looked at Shepard. The Commander lifted her chin, meeting her icy green glare straight on.

"My job is to protect the sentient beings of the galaxy, ma'am," she told her with a slight smile of defiance. "Humans are included in that pool. We were worried about your safety. Glad to see you're fine."

"My ex-husband was caught in the blast," Joker's mother announced. Shepard heard Joker's quick intake of breath, saw the movement of his head from the corner of her eye, but she didn't look away from his mother.

Shepard began, "I hope –"

"Stuff your hopes, Spectre." His mother walked into the apartment and the automated door slammed down closed behind her. Shepard was certain that if the door had been an old fashioned hinged door, the door would have splintered on the hinges.

"I just love coming to Arcturus," Shepard remarked bitterly, trying and failing to keep her tone light. Her eyes shifted from one person to the other before coming to rest on Joker. His face was pale, eyes glazed in a mix of hurt, shock, and something Shepard couldn't identify. "Joker?"

Recovering slightly, his gaze met hers. "I, uh, I need to find out what happened, Commander," he said, soft-voiced as he retrieved his crutches.

Shepard nodded, activated her omni-tool and passed its contact information to Joker. "If you need anything, contact me."

He swallowed hard and squared his shoulders. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

Mom's apartment was dim and depressing. Clothes, papers, moldy food, and other unidentifiable things littered the main room. It smelled of trash and musty clothing. A fine layer of dust covered the stuff that didn't get used regularly. Most of everything. Trash and empty prescription pill bottles littered the floor. Joker wasn't looking forward to the kitchen. He never looked forward to the kitchen. Or any of the rest of the place for that matter. When he lived here, his room had been the neat, cleaned and organized while his mother's room was a pigsty. He took note of the dust in the air and wondered how long it had been since she'd changed the air filter. It probably hadn't been cleaned since he'd done it on his last visit.

"Mom?" He skirted a debris-covered chair, his lip curling in distaste. A box of old donuts sat accumulating fungus on the cushion along with yet another cluster of empty prescription pill bottles.

Mom had sunk into depression after his birth and never snapped out of it. His parents had gotten a divorce when he was younger for many reasons, only one of which was his condition. Whenever he brought up the divorce between either of his parents before he'd joined the Alliance, they assured him that they loved him, but they couldn't love each other anymore. Between Mom's depression, her job and Dad's multiple jobs, it was a wonder they'd stayed together as long as they had.

Joker passed the kitchenette, eyes lingering on the empty bottles of booze in the sink and on the counter tops. "Mom?"

He found her in the head, tears staining her cheeks. It hurt to look at her, his heart breaking at the sight of her tangled hair, clammy skin and glassy eyed look. He'd worried the entire trip that the last words he'd ever said to her were uncaring, hurtful even. Joker hated coming home to her. He never made it a secret that he hated home. He'd left just as soon as he could, and worked his ass off to stay away from Home. How he hated it here.

He hated a lot of things. Hated that she had allowed herself to sink so low. Hated himself for being born with his condition and always wondering if it had been him that had set her off. Hated that it had driven Dad away. Hated that he was helpless do anything to help her. Dad had said that she'd always been this way, but the hormonal shift during her pregnancy had been too much. Dad said that it wasn't Joker's fault, had no way to control her bipolar disorder. For all the technology they had, for all the science and pharmaceuticals, a splintered mind still had trouble healing.

Coming home was always a kick in the gut.

"I missed you, Jeff," she told him and reached out for him.

He sighed and allowed her to embrace him, the smell of alcohol on her breath and whatever new drug the doctors had given her permeating her skin. "I missed you too, Mom."

She'd gone through various stages of depression most of his life, but on good days she'd doted on him, made him feel like he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. He hated coming home, but he would never hate his mother. It was a relief just to know she was alive. Still not well, but alive. Alive he could deal with for now.

He swallowed, wondering if she were too medicated to tell him about the bombing. "You said Dad was caught in the blast?"


	52. Bonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to thank those of you who deal with my whining about writer’s block on my LJ and on Boot Camp Thursdays. I really appreciate your input. Writer’s block sucks so badly. DX  
> Technobabble! Kindly suspend your disbelief. XD  
> Also, warning for alien discrimination this chapter. No rose-colored goggles. (YMMV.) Reminders: It’s only been 26 years since first contact, small-town thinking is small town, and Ash and her family have good reason not to like/trust aliens, especially turians. They know not of Retribution.  
> 

“Alliance Officials have raided a dangerous cult controlled by a former Alliance officer, Major Kyle.  Major Kyle surrendered and is now being treated for severe post-traumatic stress disorder.  One Alliance marine was killed during the raid. Alliance officials did not say how the marine died and are withholding the name until the marine’s family is notified. Another Alliance marine, Gunnery Chief Lela Carpenter, was wounded, an Alliance official said on the condition of anonymity—“

Ashley flicked off her omni-tool and stood, stretching. She wondered who the marine was; hoped to God it wasn’t anyone she knew. A quick and disturbing thought was that it was another N in Carpenter’s squad.  The whole team had been an arrogant lot of elitists, as was with any of the Special Forces divisions that Ash had encountered over the years of service, but that didn’t mean she’d wish them dead.  She’d had a chance to get to know them as they checked their weapons in and out of Normandy’s armory, and she and the marine detail did a few drills with them.  Naturally they’d ragged on her about her broken ribs. 

Dawson had been the nicest.  Didn’t mean he couldn’t kill her with a teacup, though.  He’d boasted a few times in the mess.  No one challenged him.  Shepard’s reaction to his death had forced Ash to wonder at the bond the Ns shared.  Life and death was a powerful bond, she mused.  She figured it was the same as the bond she’d shared with the 212, but the Ns, who’d actually been in life and death circumstances on a habitual basis, had been different, more powerful.  If she assumed so, she’d think they more willing to get their hands dirty to the benefit of the squad.

At least the cult had been taken down, though she hadn’t heard anything in the news about it before.  Though there had been segment on Westerlund News about Major Kyle’s outspoken comments against the Alliance. But Ash had chalked that up to propaganda. Hopefully, Carpenter was okay.

Forcing the dour thoughts from her mind, Ashley scooped up her sea bag and stood to disembark the transport with the other immigrants to Arcturus Station.  The woman with graying hair from the opposite side of the aisle allowed Ash to go first, and Ash inclined her head in thanks.  Sometimes civvies were civil, other times they were downright cold to Alliance personnel.

First class went through the airlock first.  Ash had no problem waiting with the rest of coach.  The trip to Arcturus hadn’t been fast-packet, but it had been fairly short – compared to the day-trip from Czarnobóg anyway.  Amaterasu was a mass relay hub and was one of the few this close to Earth that connected humans to the Terminus Systems.  It had been strange to see so many aliens in the space port of Amaterasu even though it lay on the terminus of the Illium-Amaterasu shipping lane.  It was such a small colony compared to most of the other human colonies that any ship with an alien crew compliment immediately sparked attention with the locals.

Ashley gave a small sigh and mentally shook her head.   The thought of home brought a wistful smile to her face. She needed to get home more often. She already missed them, and she’d just seen them that morning.  Both Sarah and Mom had been full of gossip about the latest scandals when Ashley had arrived two weeks ago. Apparently one of Mom’s friend’s friends knew a woman at their church who was in a relationship with an asari.  On a colony that small, that was a huge scandal.

Going home had been refreshing.  Spending nearly two weeks with Mom and Sarah reinforced her conviction that the Alliance was the best for humanity, even if her family had been blacklisted after First Contact.  Saren was going down.  After the initial shock of no one realizing how big a threat the geth and Saren were – hell, there were only speculations about Shepard tracking a rogue Spectre in the news, they were calling it the Eden Prime War, and no one said one word about the Reapers – not telling her family what was really going on had taken a real effort.  Mom would have worried more about alien influence on humans as a whole.  It was their fault the war had started. The turians had attacked them. Now twenty-six years later, another turian had attacked with his army of geth troops.

But then aliens like Wrex, Tali and Garrus made Ashley think that maybe they weren’t all bad.

The asari, though… Dr. T’Soni was a wildcard.  There was no way she didn’t hurt Commander Shepard when they melded.  Shepard had cried out just as she had when the asari on Feros had forced the Cipher on the Commander. The thought was bitter.  T’Soni had to have planted something in Shepard’s mind to gain her trust.  Why else would Shepard have brought her to Arcturus?  The human Systems Alliance Headquarters? Still, Ashley hadn’t heard about another bombing or aliens running amok, but the Brass had only just lifted the media blackout that morning.

The coach passengers moved slowly towards the airlock as she thought about the media blackout.  It hadn’t gone over well back home, but blackouts were the only way for Arcturus personnel to speak to their families.  Some of the newscasts had gone so far as to proclaim that the forty thousand humans that made up the station’s population weren’t as important as the million who wanted information just because many were in the Alliance Parliament or were diplomatic aids to Parliament and many of the pundits and protesters felt that Parliament gave too many concessions to aliens.  It irked her that elitists and extremists singled out the different human groups.  Ashley thought that was a load of bullshit.  They were all human. They needed to work together, not separately. Yeah, they worked with aliens, but it was all politics.  The damn Council had ordered cooperation, and the turian fleet was much too big of a force for humans to take alone.  Not that any of the aliens would help them or that they wanted another war with the turians.  They seemed to think in terms of total war – “no such thing as a civilian to a turian,” her father had once told her.

_“It little profits that an idle king,_   
_By this still hearth, among these barren crags,_   
_Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole_   
_Unequal laws unto a savage race,_   
_That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.”_

Her stomach churning with anxiety and frustration and her skin burning from decon, Ashley made her way through customs.  The line wasn’t as bad as she had expected it.  When the customs agent returned her ident and gave a thinly-veiled remark about Shanxi, she shot the agent a dangerous look.

It was people like her that Ashley had more of a problem with than most aliens.  She was about to retort when a skinny girl in clothes that were too big for her ran screaming through the docking bay, a large pistol in her bone-thin hand.  Ashley didn’t have time to think before the girl opened fire on the MPs behind her, spraying mass accelerated rounds upon the unsuspecting crowd.  Screams echoed in the space port and everyone dropped to the deck.

* * *

“Didn’t know you could cook, Alenko,” Joker said around a mouthful of homemade baked lasagna.

Kaidan shrugged, looking up from making his own plate full of lasagna. “Old family recipe.”

“Too bad it’s not real cow,” Joker griped.  He wiped at the melted nondairy cheese that had gotten stuck in his beard.  By the way the helmsman was packing down the chow, he didn’t seem too put out that Kaidan had opted to use vat-grown beef.  Real cow was shipped in as a luxury to those who could afford it and if their beliefs allowed for the slaughter of the animals.  The vat-grown stuff was easier to manufacture in space – any station could duplicate it inexpensively.

Liara picked at the ground vat-grown meat, separating it from the rest of the food.  “The texture is… interesting, Lieutenant,” she commented.  She didn’t seem to know what a tomato was. Those went into a separate pile.

Shepard, coffee cup in hand, walked into her hotel suite to find Joker and Liara eating at the small table, and Kaidan busy in the kitchenette.  Shepard’s dark, shoulder-length hair was wild and curly and her face was pale and pinched.  She looked remarkably wind-blown for being on a space station.  Kaidan thought she looked somewhat harrowed as well – the dark circles were back under her eyes.  He suddenly felt he was intruding into her personal space.

“I let them in, Commander,” Liara said from her place at the table, sensing Shepard’s unease.

Kaidan scooped a hefty serving onto the paper plate and set it on the bar. Shepard only raised a brow at the proffered food. “Peace offering,” he told her, trying to sound calm and cool.  He managed a sheepish almost apologetic smile when she took it and gave it a sniff.

“Smells good, but what is it?” she asked, her face scrunching in curiosity, two lines of concentration forming between her brows.

He drew in his lips thoughtfully as he watched her study the food on her plate.  “You’ve… never had baked lasagna?”

She shook her head.  “Not like this. Not with…” She poked the lasagna pasta with her spork, then: “Those big flat things.”

“ _That’s_ the lasagna,” Joker told her looking amused.  At least he was no longer brooding.

“C-Rats never had them.” She poked again at the large, flat pasta on her plate.  Kaidan moved ahead of her and took a seat by Joker. “They were always curly egg noodle… things.”

Joker made a rude noise.  “C-Rats don’t count as food,” he told her.

Shepard pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear her expression still puzzling over the meal as she made her way to the table. With a look a realization as she set the plate down on the table, she patted her hair somewhat self-consciously.  It was almost regulation-bun length now and due to whatever and where ever she’d been was a tangled fuzzy mess. 

Kaidan wondered how the hearing had gone.  After the first week of being grilled on BAaT and Rahna by the Internal Oversight Committee, he had been all too happy to get out from under their scrutiny.  The questions they had asked had been enough to curl his already curly hair most days.   _And bring out the premature gray._   Graying in ones thirties, unless due to metal toxicity or lack of minerals, was quite rare these days. 

Quietly, he slipped her the regulation comb he always carried in his pocket.  Belatedly, he realized that if he had one, she was sure to have one too. Uniform Code was Uniform Code regardless of Spectre status. The Commander accepted it with a wry grin.

“That bad?” she asked as she took it to the mirror on the wall.

Joker grinned. “Poof,” was all he said.  Shepard combed the stray curls down with a frown.

Kaidan shot him a look but the helmsman ignored it. “Hearing that bad?” Joker asked.

“Another fine Navy day,” was her non-answer as she tried to tame her hair back to respectable marine Uniform instead of puff-ball of doom. Kaidan could only guess at what had gone on at the hearing.

He took a bite, frowning as he chewed.  The baked lasagna was a recipe that he’d never managed to make just as well as his father, but no one was complaining.  Yet.  For some reason Kaidan never failed to over-salt the lasagna before adding the pasta to the rest of the ingredients. And the taste was off slightly because of the fake cheese and vat-grown beef.

“It’s good,” Shepard told him, a smile on her lips.  Well, maybe over-salted lasagna noodles were okay. She took a sip of her coffee, made a face when she realized that it had gone cold and had been cold for quite some time. She sighed. “I can never seem to keep this shit hot.”

“Helps if you drink it while it’s hot, ma’am,” Kaidan told her. Joker snorted. Liara seemed confused.

She opened her mouth to speak, but blinked then held a hand to ear. Someone had contacted her.  Her amusement swiftly died, her visage paling.  When she stood, her Game Face was in place. “You mean she was taken in the raid that killed my parents,” she said.

Kaidan tensed, a wave of apprehension coursing through him. _Holy hell._

Shepard crossed the room, her movements deliberately casual, as she listened and retrieved her shield generator and pistol. “I’m not trained for that,” she told whoever was speaking to her over her comm, “but I’ll do what I can.”

When she faced her crew, her eyes were dark and unfathomable, her expression stubbornly blank. “I have to go.”

“Commander?” Liara asked, alarmed.  She seemed unsure of what to do.

Kaidan didn’t hesitate. “Right behind you, Commander.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **C-rats:** c-rations (term for MREs during WWII/Korean War era)  
>  I only wrote half of the news brief. The first two sentences are from the game, verbatim.  
> Quote from Tennyson’s Ulysses according to SparkNotes.  
> Apologies for the Riddick reference. I couldn’t resist.


	53. Fool's Paradise

_What are we doing out here if we can't save one little girl?_

 _[You destroy to them. It is not nowhere sure.]_

 _She doesn't want to remember! Don't!_

… _Dawson?_

 _Don't touch her!_

 _Save… save…_

 _Lies! You get hit for lying!_

… _one little girl…_

 _Dawson! Oh, God,_ no _!_

 _I was willing to wait her out!_

 _[The science will prevail. Okto. Three hundred sixty. Eve far from there.]_

… _Jones?_

 _[Per'theri! Im'mori! No escape! Do not go there!]_

… _one little girl…_

 _Jones! What the hell are you doing?_

 _You were the commanding officer. Where is your sense of duty to your_ team _, Commander Shepard?_

 _[Endeka. Do not go there. Deka exi.]_

… _what are we doing…_

 _[Eve far from there.]_

… _what are we doing if we can't…_

 _What are we doing out here if we can't save one little girl?_

 _ _No! She's no good!_ Don't touch her!_

 _Talitha! No!_

Shepard woke with a start, sweat-slicked hair clinging to her head, her heart pounding in her ears, bedding tangled around her. She knew a moment of panic, and she struggled against the bedding, tumbling out of bed to the floor and landing on her back with a grunt. Gasping for air, she lay there a few moments in the dark. She stared up at the ceiling of her quarters overcome with emotion from vivid nightmare. Her stomach rolled as the images from the Prothean beacon twisted her memories with more than gore.

Shepard untangled her feet from the sheets, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, swallowing back bile. The cool air from the Normandy's cooling system on her face, arms and legs did little to assuage the nausea. She'd seen some shit, and it had been weeks since the slave girl on Arcturus, but…

Stumbling out of bed, she rushed to the head, dry heaving into sink, tears on her face, stomach acid burning the back of her throat.

 _What are we doing out here if we can't save one little girl?_

* * *

Kaidan studied Joker's face. Beneath the Alliance-issued cap, the pilot's green eyes were flat and expressionless. There was no smile, no tell-tale muscle twitch in his jaw, not even an eyebrow quirk. _Damn_. The man was hard to read. Even Williams was having difficulty discerning what was on her partner's mind or what cards were in his hands. With one hundred eighty points on the line for Kentucky Discard, Kaidan thought Joker would be more cooperative with his partner.

After a few minutes of trying to stare each other down, Joker finally gave in and smiled. "Rook," he announced, laying his cards down. He had the Rook Bird and most of the trump suit. Kaidan frowned. _No wonder he called Yellow as the Trump Color._

Garrus seemed surprised, stating what was on Kaidan's mind. "You weren't bluffing."

Joker's smile was wide, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Nope."

William's smile was just as wide, beaming with obvious pride that her partner had won the game. "We won. Now pay up."

Grudgingly, Garrus and Kaidan complied, issuing their shares of credits to the winning account.

After getting his share of the winnings, Joker gripped his crutches and stood. "If you ladies will excuse me, I've got a date with a wallaby."

"Isn't than an extinct animal on the human home world?" Garrus asked after Joker left.

"Endangered," Kaidan clarified, collecting the cards that were scattered around the table. "They aren't dead yet."

"Why is Joker –"

"You really don't want to know the meaning of that expression, Garrus," Ash said, stacking her cards and handing them to Kaidan. The Lieutenant bit back a laugh as Garrus ignored her and did an extranet search with his omni-tool.

As Garrus studied the extranet for wallabies, expressions involving them and related human toilet humor, Private Lu entered the mess with two cups of coffee, one of which was Shepard's N7 mug, and snagged the salt dispenser off the table.

"Lu, is the Commander awake?" Kaidan asked as he checked the time. Shepard had only gone to bed about two hours earlier when Garrus had taken her spot as Kaidan's Kentucky Discard partner.

Lu nodded. "Yes, sir," she affirmed as she added salt to the mug that didn't bare the N7 insignia. "Requested a cup'a'black as I was getting off guard duty. She looks like she's been fighting geth all night, sir."

"Probably more than that," Kaidan told her gently, wondering what ghost was haunting Shepard. By his count, this was the sixth night in a row since being back aboard the Normandy. "Keep it to yourself, will you?"

"Yes, sir," Lu told him and made her way out of the mess.

Ash leaned across the table. "Think Skipper's okay, LT?"

"She took that girl's death pretty hard, Ash," he said with a shrug, debating on consulting with Dr. Chakwas. "Survivor's guilt can be pretty nasty." The Chief leaned back with a mute nod. Yeah. She knew a thing or two about survivor's guilt. "And Arcturus wasn't the best stress relief," he finished to bring Ash back around.

"We'll be in the Phoenix system soon," Garrus said, tapping a talon against the table. "Do you think the Commander will have enough sleep for the mission?"

"I'm sure the Commander will be fine," Kaidan told him and stood, slipping the deck of cards into a cargo pocket on his trousers. "I'm going to check on her." He picked up his data pad, just in case she asked for a report.

Lu was leaving the Commander's quarters when he approached her door. Lu noted the data pad and held up her hand to ward him off. "I don't think that's a good idea, sir."

"I'm just checking on her," he assured the private and entered the Commander's quarters. He didn't see Lu shake her head.

Liara looked up from her mug of tea and smiled. "Lieutenant." She sat at the briefing table across from Shepard. Both women were in tank tops and pajama shorts. Had Liara slept there? He didn't recall seeing her enter, but at the time had been engrossed in a card game and kicking Joker's ass.

"Dr. T'Soni." Kaidan swallowed, surprised, eyes darting from Liara to Shepard. The Commander did look like she had just been in a fight. In her pajamas. He suddenly felt awkward. "Commander."

"What can I do for you, Kaidan?" She brought the N7 mug to her lips, seemed unperturbed to be lounging with the asari in a tank top and shorts.

Kaidan shifted, careful to keep his eyes from taking in her toned arms and legs. "I was just checking on you, ma'am."

"Prothean vision-induced nightmare," Shepard told him. "I think." She shrugged, her shoulder deeply scarred, but healed. "I'm hoping Liara can help me sort it out."

 _Oh._

"I, uh," he stammered, heart pounding. "I'll just…"

 _Of course._ _Liara_ could help her sort the Cipher and Prothean visions out better than he ever could. Kaidan swallowed, a throbbing ache forming in his heart. No wonder she turned him down all those weeks ago. _Liara_. Feeling like a complete fool, he turned to go.

"Would you like to join us?" Liara asked, catching him off guard. He dropped the data pad and spluttered until she realized what she'd asked. "For tea and coffee," she amended. She looked embarrassed, hiding her face behind her mug. "I wasn't… I mean, you can… but, I…"

Shepard looked from one to the other as Kaidan stooped to retrieve the pad, and she let out a laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a date with a wallaby – A play on the phrase, "I've got to see a man about a wallaby" – since expressions evolve over time… eh, why not? (Also, Finding Nemo introduced that particular phrase to my vocabulary. Pixar/Disney. heh.)


	54. Kid Gloves

Kaidan walked onto the bridge to find only half of Joker. The helmsman's upper half was stuffed under the helm. The occasional twitch of a foot encased in a brace with blue glowing lights let Kaidan know the man was alive.

"Joker?" he asked, assuming Joker hadn't suddenly felt the urge to throw himself under the console for no real reason.

He stuck a foot out to give the helmsman's leg a playful kick before he realized what he was doing. His foot just barely managed to miss hitting Joker's calf. If it had been any other crew member, the gesture would have been a joke, but with Joker's condition, it would have landed the man in the infirmary with either a stress fracture or full break. Kaidan was still berating himself for being so careless when Joker gave a muffled response.

"Say again?"

Joker inched out from under the console, his hat turned backwards, a grease stain on his forehead and across his nose, and a scowl on his face. Kaidan noted with disdain that the Joker's beard was in need of trim. The wiry hairs of his beard stuck out everywhere like he had been in contact with static electricity. Were the pilot one of Alenko's marines, the biotic would have given the man a firm talking to about appearance. They were the faces of the Alliance, after all.

"I said," Joker began again as he turned his hat back around, "the damn bitch box stopped responding to Vocal Commands. Fucking prototype VI beta." He bit off a few other choice phrases, one of which was in Mandarin Chinese that made Kaidan laugh.

"It isn't funny," Joker grumbled. He hefted himself up with difficulty. Kaidan reached out to help, but Joker waved him off.

"I got myself down here," he told Kaidan hotly. "I can damn well get myself back up." He levered himself back into the pilot's chair with a pained grunt. "Thanks anyway," he added once he got himself comfortable. Kaidan watched curiously as Joker pulled on interface smartgloves and began shifting icons around on the helm's orange-colored display. "The damn engineers fucked up my ship with that latest install."

"I heard that," Adams' voice came over the MC as Kaidan sat at his station, the haptic adaptive interface recognizing the microframe chip implanted into his hand and booting up the display automatically.

"Yeah?" Joker shot back. "Well, good. That's great. Go back to the old one. It worked just fine without the clammy hand smell." He called up another display and scowled at it. "I can't work like this." Kaidan scowled at his too as Joker shifted more icons and screens around.

Joker ranted a little longer at Adams as Kaidan studied his readout. The design looked totally different from the one they were using yesterday. He'd read the specs on the install. They'd updated the systems to accommodate the latest patch of the heat monitor system. The displays weren't supposed to look like this. The original specs called for a new color scheme with the update, not a total redesign of the UI. How were they supposed to do their jobs if they weren't familiar with the design?

He reached out expecting the motion accelerometer implants under the skin of his fingertips to interact with the holo. His implants didn't give any force-feed back and his finger went straight through the projection. He made a choking sound. How the hell was he supposed to get any work done? What if they were attacked? They were in uncharted space with Intel from a krogan. A trusted ally, but still. Intel from a krogan.

Joker noticed his dilemma. "Adams, the con doesn't interact with Kaidan's implants either." He tossed Kaidan a pair of interface smartgloves.

Kaidan looked at the smartgloves with disdain. Shit. He hadn't gone bareskin with a computer since before enlisting. "Tell me you're kidding," he said, holding the gloves up with only his forefinger and thumb.

Adams chuckled. "No one likes the update. Jankovic is working on a patch. She should have it done and installed by this afternoon."

"No bugs, no gloves," Joker said imperiously.

"We'll fix it, Moreau," Adams' tone lost the playful edge.

Joker backed down. "Whatever," he groused.

"Whatever what?" Shepard asked as she stepped onto the bridge. Kaidan hadn't heard anyone walking down the gangway. When had the Commander gotten so quiet?

"Whatever, sir?" Joker offered in return, twisting to look at her.

Shepard leveled him with a look. "Joker."

"The new interface sucks," he complained, showing her his gloved hands. She frowned but said nothing. "I want my baby back."

"There's a signal in the asteroid field I want to check out," Shepard told them. She reached into a cargo pocket on her BDUs and withdrew a blue rag. She tossed it to Joker.

Kaidan put on the interface smartgloves. "Which field, ma'am? The system has two."

"Inner belt," she clarified as Joker smeared grease around on his face. "Could be nothing, but I don't like it. This system is crawling with pirate signals."

"You run head-long into geth," Joker pointed out, then asked, "but you're afraid of pirates?"

Shepard made a rude noise. "We could look at them cross-eyed with this ship and their drive cores would explode in fright." She shook her head. "No, I want to make sure we aren't heading into an ambush planetside. There's no telling where Wrex got his information for that family armor of his."

"You smell a trap, ma'am?"

"I smell something," she affirmed. "I want our bases covered, our 'I's dotted, 'T's crossed and extra incendiary rounds, just in case."

"No cryo?" Kaidan asked, only half-joking. He swore by cryo ammo. It had saved his life on more than one occasion and gave his team a chance to breathe when things got out of control.

"If it floats," was Shepard's vague answer.

"You've always got orbital bombardment as an option," Joker offered.

"Hn," Shepard grunted. "Only if we want the Alliance levered with sanctions."

Joker pouted. "Sanctions. Pshft. Aren't Spectres above the law?"

Shepard chuckled but gave him a hard stare. "I can legally kill my crew. No questions asked."

Every person on the bridge and in the CIC stopped what they were doing and looked at the Commander. It was silent a full moment before Joker spoke again.

"Have I mentioned what an awesome CO you are?" he asked. "Because you are The Best."

"Joker, stop brown-nosing and go play in the asteroid field," Shepard ordered.

A grin on his face, he declared, "Best. Ever." This time he meant it.


	55. Shovelbum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TEN DAYS TO MASS EFFECT 3 GUYS OMGWTFBBQ /FLAILS
> 
> Prothean Disc Get! Technobabble! Please suspend your disbelief. (I’ve fudged a little on the main sequence F0 star and its CMEs. I… uh, don’t math good, guys.)

If Ashley's presence bothered Tali, who sat at the station to Joker's left, the quarian didn't voice it. Ever since Tali had discerned the signal emanating from the hunk of rock in space to be of quarian origin, she had been quiet. If Tali were anything, it certainly wasn't anything Ashley considered quiet. It put Ash ill-at-ease. Who knew what was in store for the recon team if Tali wasn't forthcoming with anything useful?

"Any idea how old that thing is?" Ashley asked, referring to the strangely-shaped freighter tethered to the asteroid.

She leaned over the console to get a better view of the asteroid field and their primary target. The asteroid looked like a gray, pockmarked sweet potato. Its rotation was haphazard, like something bigger had recently collided with it and knocked it around a bit. They couldn't see much from their distance. The erratic nature of the asteroid's spin and the constant bombardment of particles near it made it difficult for Joker to keep the Normandy in visual range of the ship any longer than the time it took the recon team to board. Shepard hadn't wanted to risk damage to the Normandy or the freighter's airlocks. She made it clear that if they couldn't board the ship, they would destroy the ship in the event of a pirate trap.

Ash had already gotten an ear full of Joker's complaints that it wasn't fair he couldn't stretch the Normandy to her limits. Shepard had merely taken the complaints in stride and remarked that until he got rid of the "hand-condoms" he was to maintain a distance of no less than escape velocity plus ten kilometers. Joker had shut up. Serviceman Jankovic hadn't finished with the work-around for the bridge crew yet. Ash didn't see what the big deal was. Interface gloves were a fact of life. No way was she getting implants just to operate a computer. The thought gave her chills. Computer operation was one thing, but that was a little too personal for her tastes.

Micro asteroids pelted Normandy's shields and distorted the view. "Compensating for micro asteroid collision," an ensign announced from one of the sunken stations along the gangway between CIC and the bridge.

"It's hard to tell how old it is," Tali spoke up when silence lapsed again. Ash hadn't really expected anyone to answer her question. She called up hi-res images taken by Chief Adams from their initial fly-by. The ridges of the pad of Adams' thumb were visible in the upper corner of the image. (How he managed to take holos of his thumb in _every image_ given the equipment the Normandy used was a mystery to _everyone_.)

The vessel looked _old_. Micro asteroids and other debris adrift within the asteroid field had really done a number on her. "Some of our larger vessels date all the way back to our original flight from the geth," Tali continued.

Alenko gave a low whistle of astonishment. "Three centuries? That's a long time to keep a ship," he commented but amended, "Well… a long time to keep a ship _up and running_."

"They're constantly being repaired, modified and refitted," she explained. "They aren't pretty but they work. Mostly," she admitted. Her hands fluttered over the controls, a nervous tic Ashley had noticed early on. Tali didn't appear to know how to be _still_.

"We've tried to make ourselves as independent as possible. Grow our own food, mine and process our own fuel. A patch to maintain hull integrity requires materials we just don't have. This ship could have been out here before the original flight. Or it could have been an early attempt to harvest material from the asteroid. There's no way to be sure without boarding and having a look."

"Quarians endangered the entire galaxy when they let the geth break free," Garrus spoke up from near the airlock, and Ashley agreed with his statement. The geth wouldn't have slaughtered the 212 had the quarians not created the damn flashlight heads to begin with. "I hope your people are properly contrite, Tali."

Tali bristled visibly. "As the turians are properly contrite for releasing the genophage upon the krogan?"

"You're assuming that sterilizing them was a mistake," the turian said. This was an old, _old_ argument. Ashley didn't want to be a part of galactic politics. Nor did she want to hear Wrex's point of view.

_Again._

Neither did Shepard. "That's enough," she snapped, ending the dispute. "Both of you.

"How much longer do you need, Tali?"

"I'm done," Tali told her and stood. Her masked eyes glowed faintly in the light of the overhead bridge systems as they lingered on Garrus before she shook it off and walked to the gangway and stood next to Chief Adams. A small salvage crate lay at his feet. "No life signs. Only the signal."

"Sensors?" the Commander inquired.

"Scans aren't picking up any other vessels in the area, ma'am," reported the tech on duty. "Heavy radiation from the hypergiant though. Coronal Mass Ejections are currently coming off the star every thirteen minutes. We've arrived just in time for the solar maximum."

Ashley swallowed. They had only a minimum amount of time to get the freighter's shielding up before getting fried by the star's radiation or get bombarded by whatever other matter the high velocity ejection was throwing. Even with the shields in place, there was no guarantee they could deflect bursts of rapidly-moving protons. Only radshields or military-grade shielding and hull armor could do that. And, even then, there was a slight chance of exposure and radpoisoning.

The joys of working in space, thought Ashley morosely. The 'final frontier' was a deadly, cold bitch, uncaring of its inhabitants. God only knew why it was like that.

"Time before any CMEs hit us?" Pressly asked from CIC. The room was tense but controlled. Each of the technicians was an expert of his or her field, otherwise they would have been passed over during vetting. Captain Anderson only worked with the best, and he only put the best forward.

"Anywhere from a day to thirty minutes, sir," the tech said. "We've only got one-dimensional solar observational scanning. There's no real way to judge their speed once they're released unless we measure them from multiple angles. Or deployed sensor drones around the star."

"Anything on what they're comprised of?" Alenko asked. "Energy or matter?"

"Spectral analysis indicates a little bit of both," was the answer.

"Joker, take us in," Shepard said after a moment of consideration. Ashley turned to see her studying Phoenix's corona on the large display in the middle of CIC, one arm crossed at her middle, the other extended to her face. She scratched the tip of her nose in thought. "Tali, see if there's anything useful to our mission or better ways to control or disable the geth in the databanks while you're on board. If it's a trap, take care of it. Give the pirates something to think about."

"Right," Tali agreed. "First things first though. We need to restore power before we can do anything."

* * *

Kaidan tensed as Garrus and Lu took up arms at the airlock, training their rifles on the door as the recon team boarded the mysterious quarian-made vessel. They were there as a precaution. If the recon team met with resistance and failed to stop a boarding party, Garrus and Lu's sharp-shooting skills were Normandy's first line of defense.

_Be careful, Ash._

The comm sounded: _Incoming message_. Kaidan's heart beat faster in apprehension, adrenaline kicking his senses. Was this part of a larger trap? They were only one ship. Advanced and deadly in a firefight, but _only one_ nonetheless. Most pirates' ships were no match for an Alliance frigate; however taking chances got good people killed.

"Uh, commander?" Joker announced. "Incoming message from a Tonn Actus on the planet Tuntau."

"Good. I was expecting his call," Shepard said, surprising the hell out Kaidan. "I'll take it in the Comm Room. Have Wrex meet me at the Mako in twenty minutes. Tell him to bring his favorite gun and plenty of ammo."

She directed her next order to the recon team. "Tali, your timeline just decreased. Make it quick."

"Understood, Shepard," Tali's voice agreed over the ship's comm.

"Alenko, suit up and meet Wrex at the Mako in twenty."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

Kaidan looked forward to some action. They hadn't been in a real fight in weeks, _months_ really. Marines weren't born to sit still. Asses, especially those belonging to marines, weren't made to sit. They were natural extensions of the legs, and his ass was asleep.

He had no idea why Shepard had contacted the pirate ahead of time or what scheme she had up her sleeve. Leave it to Shepard to do something completely unorthodox to get the job done. He gave her a genuine smile as he passed her on the way to the crew deck. She seemed startled for a second, but then gave him a smile of her own. Immediately weak-kneed from the magnitude of her smile, he barely made it down the ladderwell to the crew deck.

_Easy, marine._

* * *

"Damn this place is spooky," Hardy commented.

"It helps if you turn on your flashlight, Corporal," Chief Adams said as he keyed a command into the holographic interface of his hardsuit. The command turned on the flashlight embedded into the wrist gauntlet. Ashley still had trouble visualizing Adams as being able to do a recon mission. It was _Adams_. Engineers didn't do this sort of thing.

And he looked _completely_ out of place in the lightweight Phoenix hardsuit.

Hardy, who was closest to the beam of light, yelped at the sight of the corpse and bounced away in the weightlessness, colliding with the nearest bulkhead. "Shi- _it_." He sounded ill.

"Glad you're here to protect us," Adams muttered drily. He passed a scan over the vaguely male body as it floated past.

"Is that… a quarian?" Ashley asked, curiosity getting the better of her. The body was not in an environmental suit. She studied the pale face, sunken and shriveled when all the moisture had boiled away with exposure to the vacuum. The eyes were gone as were parts of the mouth. Without looking, she knew the tongue – if quarians had them – would be a nothing but a useless, dried piece of flesh resembling jerky. She noted the alien shape of the head and what passed for ears and a nose.

"Yes," Tali confirmed. She reached out to touch the corpse but stopped just short of passing a hand along the patches of clothing. "This ship has probably been here since before our war with the geth. He more than likely didn't have time to get to the ship's radshield compartment before being bombarded by energy."

"Let's not follow his lead," Adams suggested. "Monitor your rad-levels. This poor soul was over-exposed."

Ash checked her omni-tool, the holographic interface flickering pitifully. Adams tsked. "When's the last time you gave that thing any love?"

She blinked. _Love?_ It was an _omni-tool_. "I don't give anything 'love' without dinner first, sir."

"Have a heart, Gunny," the Chief Engineer said, sounding hurt. "It'll love you forever if you treat it well." He scanned her omni-tool briefly before adding, "I'll put in a chit for you a new one. And you'd better take care of it." His tone brooked no argument.

They pushed on, Adams pausing to scan different bulkhead and both Tali and Adams adding miscellaneous small equipment to Adams' salvage crate. The bridge, which looked mostly intact, was cluttered with floating debris and another corpse. This time female. Raiders hadn't looted the ship. The quarian wore simple jewelry with colored gem stones.

Tali was visibly upset. "There should be more crew. There should be bodies _everywhere_. The radshield compartment was empty." She shook her head. "They wouldn't have left these two to die." She seemed to be convincing herself. "They wouldn't."

"'Mom and pop' mining operation?" Ashley asked quietly.

Tali shook her head again. "You don't understand my people. They— "

"That's a lot of damage," Adams remarked as he scanned a console.

 _Okay_ , Ashley thought. _Maybe the bridge isn't so intact._

This mission was definitely way out of her league. Between an alien culture she had no hopes of understanding and mechanical stuff that made her brain spin, she felt completely lost. It would be nice to just shoot something. She doubted the engineers would appreciate her shooting up the bulkheads though.

_Not a damn pirate in sight._

"Tali," Shepard's voice barked over the comm, "your timeline just decreased. Make it quick."

Tali paused, looking at each of the team before she answered, "Understood, Shepard."

"Wonder what happened?" Hardy asked as Tali scanned each of the consoles.

"If they got better readings on the star," Adams trailed off.

"I really don't want to be _haki suey_ ," the Corporal commented nervously. He shifted his stance, rifle at the ready.

"Hackey what?" Tali asked as she and Adams found the central computer and opened it up.

"It's a Chinese dish made with an asari fish of some kind," Hardy explained. "Great when blackened."

"Asari blacken _everything_ ," Adams groused as he flicked open a panel and pulled out a strange-looking object. He turned it over in his hands.

"Not everything," said Hardy. "They've got something called 'azure' too. Haven't figured out what flavor it is yet though. I keep getting strange looks whenever I ask for it."

Adams shrugged adding the strange object to the salvage crate. "Probably pronouncing it wrong, Corporal."

"Or asking in the wrong establishments," Tali added, laughter in her voice. "Try Chora's Den the next time we dock at the Citadel."

Hardy glanced at her. "I... What?"


	56. OMG! A Pony!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to waiting4morning (on FF.net) for input on this chapter and being an awesome cheerleader when I needed it. 
> 
> Retcons, retcons everywhere: Due to ME3, I've got to change a few minor things, but won't be doing so for a while yet. This story will remain spoiler-free where it can. I will be calling Adams "Greg," Pressly "Charles," and Dr. Chakwas "Karin" from here on out though since they were given first names in the game. I'll go back and change their names in the story later. An apology in advance if this causes any confusion.

The thrum of Normandy's drive core reverberated against the deck. Wrex moved restlessly within the cargo bay, already having grabbed his weapons. Kaidan snapped his armor breastplate into place and looked up as the elevator door slid open to reveal the recon team. Williams removed her helmet, her neat hairstyle of this morning gone. In its place was a shaggy mop that she ignored. Helmet hair came with being a marine.

The team walked in his direction, towards the armor lockers. He went back to securing everything in place, running a diagnostic on each piece of ceramic as he connected it to the hardsuit's mainframe to check for any errors. As a marine, he was trained in the operation of heavier armors, but as a biotic he preferred the lighter-weighted armors. Heavier armors required physics threshold modifiers on the joints in order to execute most of his mnemonics. Giving up protection for biotic damage was a choice he'd taken after seeing the horror of the attack on Eden Prime. He couldn't afford to hold back.

"Skipper said she's on her way down," Williams told him as she stepped up to her locker. Her voice was clipped. She opened it and slammed her helmet in. Kaidan was tempted to ask what was wrong, but thought better of it. He'd let her cool down first. Knowing the Chief, it was probably an after effect of an adrenaline rush.

"Thanks."

By the time Shepard arrived, Kaidan was dressed and had his weapons checked out of the armory. He even had time to put in an order for the newest patch to the operating system of his Logic Arrest to download when they got back from the mission.

* * *

Tuntau would have been a nice place to visit if it weren't for the methane atmosphere and radiation from the hypergiant.

And the band of turian pirates.

Shepard groaned and brought her hand up, but thought better of it and dropped it to her side again. " _Wrex_." Kaidan felt sure she would have pinched the bridge of her nose were it not for her SCABA faceplate.

"So much for 'Trojan Horse,'" he said as he hunkered down behind a make-shift barricade. Two rounds nearly punched through his barrier. Whatever the pirates were using was military-grade. _Definitely illegal outside of the Terminus Systems._ It might have been illegal _inside_ the Terminus Systems. Who knew?

"It would have worked if we didn't have a krogan," Shepard insisted. She primed a grenade and threw it into the fray.

Kaidan chuckled despite the situation. "Should I make a memo? 'Krogans don't work for infiltration missions.'"

"Noted," Shepard groused and ducked. The explosion took out a few of the pirates. The shockwave knocked Wrex back.

"Watch it, Shepard!" the krogan yelled as he picked himself off the ground. "Get the door, not me!" He tossed a few of the pirates into the air with his biotics. Kaidan took a few shots at them with his Kessler, wasn't surprised when their shields held. He charged an EMC and threw it into Wrex's biotic field. Once their shields were down, Wrex took them out with his shotgun.

"This armor better be worth it," Shepard said quietly as she warped the door and depressurized the base.

Kaidan swallowed. Most of the pirate gang was outside firing at them. They were going to die anyway. Wrex was busily ripping off arms and Kaidan, himself, had clipped quite a few armors, dragging out breathable air.

It didn't take the rotten taste out of his mouth, and it was a decision he was glad he didn't have to make.

Wrex charged in, but Shepard didn't follow. "Keep them from flanking him," she ordered. "Once we've cleaned up here, we'll go in guns blazing."

Wrex's voice came over the comm, "You two are getting all the fun."

"No one said you had to go in right _now_ , Wrex," Shepard told him.

* * *

After years of looking for his grandfather's armor…

_So close._

It was just a piece of junk, Wrex reasoned. But it was _his_ junk. And he wanted it back. The turian bastard had no right to it.

It was a relic. A leftover from a time before. The krogan were dying. There was no going back.

_Neutered._

Females willingly accepting the Void when they couldn't bear children.

There was no saving the krogan from their current ways. He couldn't help the krogan. They didn't want to be helped. He had tried, and he had failed. In the terms of one of the human whelps, he had failed spectacularly.

And still bore the scars of the Hollows.

Of Jarrod.

But _preserving_ them…

Not preserving them as the galaxy believed the krogan to be. To the Void with that. The galaxy could swallow itself whole and leave them alone for all he cared. No, it was preserving the Old Ways. What it meant to truly be Krogan. That had to mean _something_.

_Didn't it?_

Wrex shook his head, ignoring the thoughts that only took him in circles, and trudged on, shotgun at the ready. Thinking in circles only made his head hurt.

The vented bunker had caught most of Tonn Actus' remaining men by surprise. Not that there _were_ that many left inside. When turians fought, they usually threw themselves at the enemies in waves meant to whittle down defenses. Of course, "throwing themselves at the enemy" wasn't really how they operated. Everything was calculated, organized. Efficient. Even the way the pirates operated was based on their damned military doctrine.

 _Bastards_.

He nodded in approval as he looked over the bodies, his lip curling in hate. _Damned turians._ _Dead turians._ Many were still in the stages of putting on armor. They hadn't been expecting a fight from Shepard with her trade of a krogan battlemaster for plate armor from the Rachni Wars. In fact, at first, the pirates seemed to think Shepard would help them when he jumped out of the Mako with a roar.

_Stupid turians._

Of course, he was supposed to wait until they were inside the bunker to turn on them. Something to do with ponies? _Damn translator._ What the hell was a pony, anyway? Sounded edible.

But… _to the Void with that._ He wasn't going to allow a damned turian to gloat over his capture. Not even for Shepard.

Shepard knew how to be ruthless when she needed to be and knew how to negotiate when the time was right. A formidable opponent. If she ever turned against him, he'd have the fight of his life on his hands. Might even be as good as his fight with Aleena.

He found Tonn Actus in his office, armor on. Too bad someone forgot to tell him the air was rushing out. The turian was laid over his desk reaching for his helmet on the floor. Wrex scoffed and went to the safe behind the desk punching in the code his contact had given him. Shepard would probably kill him when she found out the price of the code and the information, but it was worth it.

Besides, Shepard knew how to be ruthless enough to meet Helena Blake's price.

* * *

The last pirate dropped with an audible squelch as his head exploded from Shepard's shotgun blast. Dark blue splattered the bunker behind him, the parched, cracked ground greedily absorbing the alien blood.

Kaidan checked his HUD for hardsuit signatures. Inquiry: None. "No contacts, Commander."

"Wrex?"

"On my way out."

"Good." Shepard turned away from the dead turian and started towards the Mako, her footsteps crunching on the gray silicate. "Normandy, base is clear. Rendezvous in thirty minutes at the DZ. Tell Liara we've got time for her to explore the Prothean ruins if she's in gear."


	57. Necropolis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Warning: Sex Education with Dr. Mordin Solus, complete with… visual aids. Don’t read at work, k?  
>  Prothean-related stuff is not intended to be accurate._

A Prothean data disc! Liara could hardly believe it. It was almost too good to be true. So many secrets to unlock. Discs were incredibly rare finds. It could be anything from religious texts to a shopping list. She could hardly wait to find out. The decryption program would take weeks without the right equipment.

Liara stretched her neck, looking away from the diagnostics screen. Not for the first time since coming aboard the Normandy, Liara wished she had access to the laboratories on Thessia. Instead she was stuck on a stealth starship that could only access the extranet occasionally.

Though the few times she had to access the extranet, Liara used it to look up information on Shepard.

Such a remarkable woman.  Liara was impressed with the obvious confidence Shepard inspired in her people, but Liara still had to look up what had occurred during what the human media called the Alliance Friendly Fire Incident of 2182 and their worries for human biotics.  It was so incredibly strange that biotics were as segregated as they were within the society.

She set the idea aside, determined to come back to it later as she tingled with the excitement of wondering what had happened to Shepard during the Incident, and what she had to do to protect her team and the civilians.  Liara was sure Shepard had done something brave and heroic, but had gotten there only a moment too late. She couldn’t help but wonder if Shepard had had someone in her time of need, of pain.

Then there was Akuze.  What extraordinary feats did she have to overcome? By the Goddess, Shepard had been so young and trapped on a colony of flesh-eating threshers. The adventure of staying alive. Overcoming impossible odds and surviving when no one else could have.  Liara sighed, wanting to know everything about the woman. She was incredible.  How had she done it? Did she have someone to comfort her?  Had someone looked over her with heart-rending tenderness and kiss away her pain?

Liara gazed at the read-out again. Her decryption program could take weeks to decipher the glyphs on the disk. Shepard and the others were still on the planet; she wouldn’t be able to get access to Real Information until they were well out of the system.  Local searches on the system’s data cache would probably not provide anything relevant. Not this far deep into space. They were a few clusters from the nearest human settlement.

So she was currently stuck with older episodes of “Science Fun Today!” and “Science Round Table.” Liara frowned. She’d already watched all the “Science Round Table” episodes, even the ones that were thirty and forty years old.

Liara sighed and called up her omni-tool. Scrolling through her downloads she selected an episode that featured human physiology. Perhaps Shepard would be impressed with her knowledge if she learned more.

She pressed play.

“Cheerful greeting: On this episode of ‘Science Fun Today!’ our guest, Dr. Mordin Solus will explain the biology of human mating and reproduction,” the host, Dr. Hamadot Taur told her audience. The elcor scientist slowly moved to her seat. The camera panned across the audience. There weren’t any humans. Dr. Taur, if Liara recalled correctly, had passed away ten years ago. Humans had still been looked at with skepticism in the scientific community around the time of the filming of the program.

“Fangirlingly coy: Thank you for joining us, Dr. Solus.”

The camera panned to the guest, Dr. Solus. The salarian, cream-colored with no visible facial tattoos, nodded perfunctorily. His skin was smooth save for several scars on the left side of his face. His right cranial horn was missing and bandaged. “Pleasure to be here, Dr. Taur.”

“Fangirlishly curious: What can you tell us about human biology and their reproductive processes?”

Dr. Solus took a sniff of the air. “Sexual reproduction. Male and female of species. Each gender has two divisions to their reproductive system.”

“Disbelieving: Two? Like certain species of flowering plants?”

“Yes. Exactly. Male has penis and testicles. Female has uterus and ovaries. Male protrudes out at all times. Female has vagina. Similar to cloacae in varren.” The salarian huffed a laugh. “Not recommended for margarine production, however.”

“Fascinating,” Liara said to her omni-tool.

* * *

A breeze cooled hot skin. Pain racked his body. His mouth was dry.  He couldn’t keep his eyes open, and when he could open his eyes, all he saw was a blur of shadow and light.  Everything was slow, his body too heavy. Where ever he was, the heavy smell of drugs, metal, and body fluids assaulted him.  He tried to swallow back bile and failed.

There were voices to his left.  “He's awake? How could...?” 

He leaned over and vomited. It tasted of metal and stomach acid.  He moaned as his stomach rolled again. Pinching pain in his extremities and aching in other places, Rear Admiral Kahoku tried to get his bearings as he lay back. He was sweating and hurting, and he couldn’t control his bladder or bowels.

Shadows above, bright white lights.  Blurry, too blurry to make out.  Orange and black uniforms of some sort.

“Interesting. Add his response the report. Command will be interested in the results.”

“Let’s try subcutaneous injections of Thoros-A.”

“Caused cancerous skin lesions in the last subject.”

“Add two CCs of zeta-kaphalin to slow the effects.”

Kahoku moaned again, unable to speak.  He could barely think straight. He hoped Shepard got his message.

When he shut his eyes again, he dreamed of his wife and children.

* * *

Liara cocked her head to the side as the cam view switched to the inside of the female human. The pale hue of the flesh was crisscrossed with purple veins. A pink fleshy tube of some sort was inserting itself at regular intervals. Liara cocked her head to the other side.

“As you can see,” Dr. Solus said, “penis insertion similar to most observed male-female sexual reproduction.”

“Hey, Liara.”

Joker’s voice startled her. She jumped and quickly shut off the educational video as Dr. Solus was explaining male ejaculation, turning her attention to the cam at the back of her room. “Y-yes?”

“The Commander says there’s time for you to look over that ruin dirtside if you’re ready by the time she gets back to the ship.”

“Thank you,” she said, eager to discover a new Prothean site. “Yes. I will be going. When will she back aboard?”

“Twenty minutes or so,” he said. There was a pause as Liara walked across the infirmary. “What the hell were you watching anyway?”

“An educational video on humans and reproduction,” she told him, brightening. Maybe he could answer a few questions. “It’s fascinating what humans have to do in order to conceive children.”

“Uh, okay. Fascinating. Right.”

Liara wondered if she had offended him.  His bone structure was much weaker than most. “May I ask you a question, Joker?”

He was silent as she entered the elevator to the cargo bay. Were they having comm difficulties again?

“Flight Lieutenant?”

Joker said nothing. Then: “You can ask a question as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with humans and reproduction. I’m on duty.  Getting weird looks here. Besides, asari reproduction is much more ‘fascinating’.”

Liara frowned, disappointed. “Perhaps I will ask Lieutenant Alenko then.”

“You do that, Liara. He’s full of interesting trivia on human reproduction. Bridge out.”

* * *

It wasn’t every day that he got to learn about new alien tech, especially not Prothean tech, so Kaidan volunteered to go back to Tuntau with Liara after refueling the Mako.

Tuntau was just as heat-blasted as it had been. There was still fifteen hours left of Tuntau’s sixty-nine-hour day. After that, surface temperature would drop exponentially.  He hoped they wouldn’t be on the planet until sunset, but as the asari scientist chattered away about artifacts found at her Therum dig site, he began to wonder if they would be.  He asked a few pointed questions about the tech he was hoping to get answers to, but she had no definitive answers. Kaidan’s hopes for new insights on tech were dashed inside of an hour, and by the time the VI alerted them of their course, he was sorely regretting volunteering when he could have had a hot shower, chow and spent his downtime talking with Shepard or Ashley.

Liara made a choked sound as Kaidan slowed and brought the Mako to a stop in front of the ruin. The burned out hulk of a shuttle sat at its base while the ruin itself towered before them.

“Looters,” she said, her voice hoarse with frustration. She made a growling sound.  The subtle hum of her biotics as they interacted with her white and blue Devlon armor made his teeth itch.  She jumped out of the vehicle without seeming to care that there might be armed looters still in the area, though at closer inspection, the shuttle was scored and covered in a fine sheen of silicate.  It had been there a while.

Liara had her omni-tool open and was inspecting the wreckage by the time Kaidan reached her.  He holstered his weapon when his HUD showed no signs of life or eezo cores.  The square pyramid loomed over them, stairs leading to its apex.  It was as stark and bleak as the rest of its surroundings.

“Why the pyramid shape?” he asked.  He was curious, but also wanted to coax her into a better mood.  He didn’t want to spend the next how-ever-long with an annoyed scientist.  It wouldn’t help either of their moods.

Kaidan was surprised that the Prothean ruin was a four-sided pyramid.  He swallowed, wondering if the Protheans really did have any influence on the early human civilizations.  The Prothean cache on Mars always made him wonder. He didn’t recall any Martian pyramids in any of the pictures from history class though.

“You are looking at the tip of an obelisk,” Liara told him drawing his attention to her. She paced near the shuttle, omni-tool lit and running.

He let out a low whistle. “Big obelisk.”

“Indeed,” she said.  She sounded thrilled.  Kaidan found it interesting, but clearly not as interesting as Dr. T’Soni.  She wasn’t exactly dancing around, though, by the sound of her voice, she wanted to. “Around the middle of their fourth empire, the obelisks began to get larger. They were originally only three sided around the time of their first appearance. No space-faring species has been able to figure out what they represent.  One theory is that they are religious artifacts, similar to sun- and moon-god worship common to most prehistoric species encountered by the Citadel species.”  She scanned the pyramid. “There’s no telling how tall this structure was originally. That this much remains above ground is rare.”

She sighed. “I wish Shepard had chosen to come with us.”

Her wistful comment brought Kaidan up short and his lips puckered in annoyance. “The Commander has a lot of things on her mind right now.”  It annoyed him more that he sounded so defensive.  He was _not_ jealous.  He didn’t even know if there was anything to be jealous over.  And he was right. Shepard had a lot of things on her mind. The mission came first. It had to.

“She could offer her insight gained by the Cipher,” Liara told him, with a vague hint of disapproval.  She took several holos of the decayed markings etched into the side. “Who knows what secrets are locked inside here. Or if there’s a larger settlement under the ground.” 

He stiffened. “What?” Part of him was relieved that Dr. T’Soni was only fascinated by Shepard because of the Cipher and the beacon.  The other part was appalled.  Shepard was more than just a resource of Prothean data.

“It may also contain information on the Reapers,” she said.  It sounded like an afterthought. She took more holos and made typed into her omni-tool.

At first he thought she said to appease him and his curt tone, but then he realized: “You don’t think they exist?”

“I am not sure what to think,” she told him after a moment.  “There’s no evidence they exist. Only a few myths… and nothing that directly links them to galactic extinction.”

“Myths are usually based on facts retold over and over again,” he pointed out.

She regarded him a moment, but he couldn’t see her face clearly beneath her face plate. “You speak like an archaeologist.”

“You’ve seen Shepard’s visions from the beacon,” he told her. “Isn’t that evidence Reapers exist?”

She nodded, turned her attention back to her omni-tool. “Unfortunately, no one in the scientific community or on the Council will listen to ‘visions.’ We have to find more proof.”

“Not just proof,” he told her. “We’ve gotta stop Saren from making the visions real.”

“Now you sound like a matriarch.”

Kaidan couldn’t figure out if that was an insult or a complement.  He’d never met an asari matriarch before. The only one he knew of was Liara’s mother, and that made him wonder, not for the first time, if it was a good idea to allow Liara access to Shepard’s mind.

"Joker says that you are full of interesting trivia on human reproduction." It was said without preamble. She looked at him expectantly.

Kaidan sighed. _Of course he did._ Joker was quiet over the comms, but Kaidan knew he was listening and felt sure the surly pilot was cackling maniacally.

Fourteen hours, six minutes until sunset.


	58. Tanaerum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _  
> **Liberties taken with the Cerberus bases on Binthu:**  
>  To add a little more flavor to the fight scene with the rachni encountered on Binthu, I completely ignored that there were those exploding workers at one of the bases and changed the rachni soldier into a rachni Brood Warrior-type. I didn’t want to have to deal with the acid-spitting soldier-types or the exploding worker-types prior to their encounter on Noveria (I haz plans for those; kind of), and I liked the idea of Cerberus having a thing for biotic experiments. Sadly, there will be no maimings of main characters this chapter. I did use cryo rounds though. Thank you, everyone, who participated in the ‘cold ammunition headcanon’ post at the Mass Effect community on LJ. You gave me much food for thought. Thank you, thank you._

_Biotics._

Kaidan was dumbfounded. The alien bug could use biotics. The Cerberus base was in chaos. Commandos shouted orders; others thought they were being attacked from all sides.

“Enemies everywhere!” one shouted only to be thrown across the room by the giant alien bug.  It impaled another human with one of its many claws then tossed the body aside.

“This is insane,” Shepard said from beside Kaidan.  Crouched in what little cover they could find, she met his gaze briefly. Her odd-colored eyes assessed him.  They had yet to give away their position as the bug made short order of its captors.

“I’m still hoping this is some kind of dream,” he told her with a wry look.

“You dream of biotic bugs?” she asked, eyebrow rising in amusement. “Dr. Chakwas must be giving you the good stuff.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, well. Don’t tell my CO. She might restrict me to light duty.”

“Your secret’s safe with –“

A warp field flew over their heads and struck the nearest, and final, Cerberus commando.  The man let out a scream as the undulating force of gravity bent his limbs in directions they were never meant to go, joints and bones audibly splintering.  He dropped like a brick once the field wore off, blood pooling beneath his twisted and broken frame.

“Shit.” That had been one hell of a warp field.  No less than asari-grade.  Kaidan swallowed.  Going up against human and humanoid biotics was one thing, but this was an animal. Or insect. Or… hell, he was going to give himself a headache trying to relate it to anything he’d seen before. It was alien; it was strange; and it terrified the hell out of him.  How the hell did you kill a big biotic bug without getting yourself killed in the process? The thing didn’t seem to have any strategy, just survival instinct. Like an animal. Or an insect. Or—

“Think it’s amped?” Shepard questioned bringing him out of his circular reverie.  She had her omni-tool up.

Kaidan followed suit –anything to keep his mind off the alien bug, really— running a hacking suite on the base’s computer mainframe to find out just what the hell the rogue BlackOps group had been up to prior to their arrival.  He received a warning shortly before the system began flashing its data.

 _Damn it._ “No way to know what they were doing here,” he told the Commander as he ran as many subroutines as his omni-tool allowed without overloading the ‘tool’s VI and memory. “They’re deleting their data. Looks like an automatic failsafe.”

It was Shepard’s turn to curse. “Shit.”

“Yeah. What I’ve managed to get will probably take weeks to decode. Hopefully the specialists at FLEETCOM can make some sense of it.”

“Meanwhile we’re stuck in the Traverse in an underground bunker with a hostile biotic alien bug,” she said drily. “Great first date, Alenko. Thanks.”

Her flippant remark caught him off guard.  With the other members of the squad split into pairs and taking out the other two Cerberus bunkers, it was just the two of them.  Shepard’s penchant for flirting in the heat of battle aside, he couldn’t help what came out of his mouth in response.

“In my defense, you don’t seem like a flowers and candy-type girl.”  He grinned at her surprised expression and felt like he’d scored points in whatever flirting-pissing contest they had going on.  He turned his attention back to the situation at hand. “Just wait till you see what I’ve got planned for the grand finale.”  One of them was going to have to flank the creature.  He steeled himself, searching for enough cover to get around the thing.

She gave an unladylike snort and gestured with her shotgun when she saw his unspoken plan. “Well, as long as there’s a big gun,” she retorted suggestively.

He holstered his pistol and unclipped his assault rifle. “Yeah, well. I have it on good authority you like things that go boom. Especially since you keep enough plastic explosives on you to make it into orbit without a vehicle.” He gestured with his rifle. “And as far as big guns go,” he added with a chuckle, “mine’s bigger.”

He darted out of cover and sprinted for the nearest medical station to hide behind while Shepard drew the creature’s fire.

* * *

_Zombies._

It was right out of some horror vid.  Rear Admiral Kahoku’s frantic message about BlackOps was fresh in her mind. But this?  What the hell was this?  The zombie-things looked like Thorian Creepers.

“Fucking hell,” Ashley breathed, then sank lower against the large potted plant, away from what looked like a very well-armed commando as she paced around the containment field.

“Creepers,” Tali commented quietly after they waited until the commando had walked away.

Ashley nodded. “Creepers alright. Or at least they look like them.”

“I’ve never seen or heard about them before Feros.”

“Can you hack that field?” Ashley asked after a moment of silence.

“And let the Creepers damage most of the bad guys?”

Ash nodded as she unclipped her sniper rifle. When it unfolded, she thumbed the switch to turn on the magneto-optical trap to supercool the shaved metal slugs into cryo projectiles. The MOT worked in conjunction with the magnetic apparatus of the rifle's micro-scaled mass accelerator and had been a bitch to mod and program. She sighted the back of the commando’s un-helmeted head, took a breath and held it.

“With my eyes closed,” Tali remarked.

“Do it.”

As soon as the field dropped, Ash took her shot, the impact of the projectile blowing the top of the commando’s head off, spraying blood, bone and brain matter. The corpse fell with a thud, and the super-cooled shell froze the smaller chunks before they reached the ground.

_Huh. No shields._

“Idiot,” she growled.  The other Cerberus commandos were much smarter, but the acidic sludge from the Creepers’ vomit kept their shield generators near overload.  A few rounds with the assault rifle and Tali’s pistol finished them off.

The Creepers they kept at bay with sledgehammer rounds and shotguns.

Because: “Oh my God! Ew!”

And: “Oh, Kee’lah! That’s disgusting!”

* * *

_A big bug and human biotic commandos._

The day had started off lackluster. Now it was exciting. Except when the krogan battlemaster charged into the fray and got thrown across the room by the bug, which was apparently biotic and no one bothered to tell them beforehand. Then the day became chaos.

“Well this should be interesting,” Garrus remarked as he hammered another commando with cryo rounds from his assault rifle while keeping an eye out for the biotic bug.  It seemed content on helping him with the commandos for now, but he figured just as soon as it was done, it would turn on them. The cryo rounds managed to hit in all the right places, stunning the commando enough to stagger for a headshot.

The primary rule for taking out a Cabal of biotics was to take only headshots. Garrus thought it was a stupid rule. Headshots were reserved until after barriers were down.  Shields were easily penetrated by overloading the generator; biotics could outlast a shield generator. At least it held true for turian and asari biotics.  He wasn’t as sure about humans, come to think about it.

Wrex charged it again, barrier up this time. He picked the bug up with a roar and threw it at the nearest commando.

“That’s not fair, Wrex,” Garrus shouted from his position. “Didn’t your parents teach you not to throw your toys?”

“My father tried to kill me,” Wrex grunted. “His tribe wiped out the only soldiers loyal to me.” _So much for friendly banter_ , Garrus thought as the krogan blasted a commando in the face with his shotgun, and then biotically threw another one into the bug.  Its claws made short work of its new play toy and it turned back to Wrex who pumped shotgun blast after shotgun blast at it with little effect.  Its biotic barrier was unusually strong.

_Unusually._

_Because I always encounter alien bugs with_ only _mediocre biotic barriers_ , Garrus thought with no small amount of amusement.

“Shepard to Team Hazmat,” Shepard’s voice came over Garrus’ visor commlink.

“Garrus here.”  He flattened himself against the deck as a biotic… whatever the hell that was flew at him.  He rolled to his feet and leapt over a container to get away from the alien as it tossed another glowing blue blob of energy at him.

“You encounter any bugs?” There was gunfire on her end.

“Yeah. Big, ugly and biotic,” he affirmed, managing to duck in time before Wrex diverted its attention with his shotgun and a biotic attack of his own.

“F!systemerror[To aggressively engage in the act of intercourse. Of ill-repute. Present tense. Human standard slang. Mindoiran accent noted. Reiterating in the presence of human offspring Not of Age is discouraged for diplomatic reasons. See your Hierarchy representative on the Citadel for more in-depth explanation of human offspring disputes.]” Garrus’ translator seemed to always glitch on that word, but it caught the rest of Shepard’s words effortlessly. Maybe Tali could recommend a better program. For all he knew it was the damn VI causing a feedback loop. “Looks like they were either studying them or going to use them as weapons. …Or both.”

“Rogue Spectres, rogue BlackOps group, rogue geth, rogue… bugs. You know how to show a guy a good time.” He rolled away and fired at the bug to draw its attention away from Wrex. “Just as soon as we’re done with this thing, we’ll meet you at the Mako.”

Shepard made her usual snort-grunt-laughing sound. He wondered how she never had mucus run out her nasal passage when she did that. Also: It just sounded painful.

“Belay that,” she told him. There was a screech over the comm and her voice cut out over a blast.  “Secure your bunker, download what information you can if it isn’t already flashed, and rendezvous with us here.”

“Will do.” He drilled a hole through the bug’s chitinous side with the cryo rounds.  The sound it made nearly bored through his skull from the inside out.  He shook his head to clear it.

“Hng. Damn thing was telepathic,” Wrex commented.  He gave it a kick.

Garrus blinked. _Telepathic_ , biotic bugs? “Not even asari are telepathic.”

“Scared, Garrus?”

“Worried,” he said with a decisive shake of his head. “Look at this place, Wrex. You’re a merc. You’ve been around. You know damn well this is a lab.”  It reminded him a little of Dr. Saleon and the elcor serial killer’s diabolical labs of body parts. “A butcher’s parlor.” When he booted up his omni-tool to hack the system, he wasn’t surprised that the data in the system had already been flashed.  He did manage to save what looked like a partial email from another base complete with a trans-code for tracking.

His surprise came when Wrex nodded in agreement. “No good could ever come out of this. Could see why this ‘blackops’ group had to go rogue though.”

“You think the human government just wants to cover this up? Sent Shepard to clean it up to keep their hands clean?”  The idea pissed him off.  Why Shepard insisted on plying by the rules when her _government_ very clearly did not…

Wrex guffawed. “Guarantee it won’t be covered by their media… or any other aliens’ newscasts. That Kahoku fellow seemed pretty adamant about the ‘rogue’ part though.” He and Garrus looked around for more eezo cores and hardsuit signatures. All they found was some human Phoenix armor. Lot of illegal weapon and wetware mods, too.

“Fifty creds says he’s already dead,” the krogan said as he nosed through yet another bin for salvage and ammo. “Probably died right after he managed to get the word out.  Encryption was crap on that message.”

* * *

_This kind of shit only happened in the vids._

Kaidan scanned Rear Admiral Kahoku’s body.  Multiple, visible injection sites. Untreated, festering wounds.  Foam around the mouth. There were no markings that Kaidan could see that indicated an attack on the body by the bug.

“God damn it.”

Shepard’s quiet curse drew his attention to her.  The commander’s posture was rigid, her face a mask of… of what? Shock? Horror? Revulsion? All of the above? She shut her eyes and looked away. He watched as her throat worked and she moistened her lips.

“Who the hell is this group?” Williams asked.  The Chief’s posture was just as rigid, but she didn’t look as sick as Shepard did. She looked angry, vengeful.  He knew he could count on Williams to temper revulsion with a heavy dose of anger.  “And what were those… giant bug things?”

Shepard shrugged. “Hell if I know.” She huffed a sigh. “Thorian Creepers and… and bugs.” She shuddered. “Better than bats, I suppose.”

“You… don’t like bats, ma’am?” Williams asked.

“Ask anyone from Mindoir about bats and you’ll get the same story,” was all Shepard said. 

She knelt down beside Kahoku and pressed a finger to her commlink earbud. “Joker, radio Fifth Fleet. Tell them we’ve found Rear Admiral Kahoku’s body in a base on Binthu in the Voyager Cluster.”

“Damn,” Joker said before correcting himself. “Ah, yes ma’am. Message away. Awaiting further orders from Fifth Fleet.”

“What now, Shepard?” Garrus asked.

“We wait for orders from Fifth Fleet,” Shepard replied. “Then we get back to the Citadel.”

“You think this is connected to that doctor on the Citadel?” Williams asked. “The one in the Wards?”

Shepard lifted her shoulder.

Kaidan didn’t remember a doctor on the Citadel with any connection to this group.  “Who now?”

“Dr. Michel,” Shepard supplied. “You were pretty out of it when we met her. She was being blackmailed by someone named Armistan Banes.  The marines on Edolus were investigating him when they ran into the thresher nest.”

“Only he was already dead,” Ashley pointed out. “Explains why they needed the medical supplies though. Maybe. Or maybe he was acting alone, and they shut him up permanently.”

Kaidan nodded. “Nothing says permanent like Death.”

“I doubt Dr. Michel knows anything,” Garrus said. He sounded defensive.  “She would have said something more than thinking Banes worked for the Alliance. She would have given us a heads up.”

“Would she?” Kaidan asked. Garrus stared at Kaidan, an unreadable look crossing his alien features.

“This just got bigger than covering up fucking blackmail, Garrus,” the Commander replied, her mouth forming a thin line.  “It won’t hurt to question the doctor.”  She ran a hand through her hair.  “Whatever this group is, it’s as much as a threat to galactic peace as Saren and the geth are.”  She suddenly looked like she had the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders.

“Think Banes was part of this group?” Kaidan asked.

Shepard nodded. “I’d be willing to bet on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Trivia/Geekery:** Tanaerum: According to Greek myths, it was the home of Hades and the entrance to the underworld where Heracles journeyed to ask the god of the underworld permission to bring Kerberos to the surface for his Twelfth and final Labor._


	59. Hostile Takeover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This chapter did not turn out how I wanted it. :/ I hope everyone enjoys it just the same._

Kaidan finished up his last report for the day.  He sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring at the interface. The subtle hiss of hydraulics caught his attention, and he looked up. When Shepard walked out of her quarters in civvies, Kaidan did a double take.  His first thought was that she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen.  His second thought was that he was a fool for even thinking it. She was his commanding officer and a friend who had a lot of shit on her shoulders.

Shepard rarely, if ever, wore anything but fatigues or dress blues while aboard the Normandy – and she only wore dress blues if she had a meeting with the Council.  Her appearance threw him. Though her attire wasn’t form-fitting, it still enhanced her curves and drew his eye more so than seeing her in fatigues.  He found he had to check himself before speaking to her. Her dark denim pants were pressed and center-pleated, loose against her legs but tailored to fit the curves of her hips.

She’d also chopped her brown hair back into different lengths and the loose tendrils framed her heart-shaped face, enhancing her cheekbones and partially hiding the scar on her brow.  The dark-green color of her boat-necked sweater combined with darkness of her hair enhanced the translucence of her skin under the light of Normandy’s overheads. The color also brought out the green flecks in her copper eyes as she closed the distance between her door and Kaidan’s duty station.

Her lips looked moist. Lip balm?

He swallowed thickly, averting his eyes, and scrubbed a hand through his hair, over his face.  Her words weeks ago came back to him: _“Lot of static on the comm, Alenko.”_

“Lieutenant?”

He opened his eyes. “Ma’am.” She rested her hip against his desk. His gaze trailed up the length of her body before resting on her face. The dark circles were still beneath her eyes.

“You alright?” she asked, concerned.

 _Shit_.

He nodded. “Touch of a headache,” he lied. “Nothing major.” He gestured with his datapad. “Long day.”  

That part wasn’t a lie.

He stopped short of asking how she was doing. Instead he pointed at her clothing and asked, “Heading to the Citadel, ma’am?”

She looked down at herself and back to him. Her face was neutral when she responded, “I’m going to have a chat with Dr. Michel. See if she knows anything about this rogue BlackOps group and Banes. Or anything.”

“Like that?”

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. He meant to ask, “Like what?” His mouth and brain chose not to cooperate. He stammered as she quirked an eyebrow, amusement flickering briefly across her features.

“Spectre business,” she told him with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to wear what I want, Lieutenant.”

“That’s not – I mean, of course. Yeah.  Ah, yes ma’am. But I didn’t mean…” He harrumphed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn. It’d been a long day. “God, I need a drink.”

Shepard laughed. It was refreshing to hear even if it was at his expense. “Good to know I can still drive my officers to drink.”

Kaidan wanted to tell her she did more to him than that. He only shook his head, and signed out of the system. Standing, he met her gaze evenly. “I’d like to go with you to ask questions, ma’am.”

“I’m not going in the capacity of an Alliance officer, Alenko.”

He shrugged. “I understand that.” He indicated his own uniform. “And I need an excuse to relax.”

An hour later, Shepard and Kaidan, who was dressed in civvies himself, stepped off the transport near Dr. Michel’s clinic.  Kaidan recognized the building, vaguely remembering having a migraine the last time they were there.

“Got a moment, Spectre?”

Both Kaidan and Shepard turned toward the woman’s voice as she stepped out of the shadows.  Kaidan appraised her frankly, searching for possible weapons, his eyes darting towards her hands.  Her fingers were thin and her nails were neat and manicured. Nothing was out of place.  Her makeup was immaculate, her gray hair pulled into a bun on the back of her head. She was nondescript in her pin-striped suit. She looked like a well-groomed human business woman.  There was nothing remarkable about her.

Shepard seemed to come to the same conclusion. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

The woman scoffed. “I know who you are, Shepard. Your name and face come up in certain… circles.” Her gaze flicked to Kaidan.  She gave him an assessing once-over before turning her attention back to the Commander.  “Besides, Urdnot Wrex told me you would be visiting the doctor on your next layover.  It was only a matter of time before you returned and I could track you down.”

Shepard looked at Kaidan briefly, worry in her eyes.  The look told him to be ready for anything. He was glad he brought his pistol, though he made no move retrieve it from the shoulder harness concealed beneath his leather jacket. Instead, he hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his faded denim slacks and tried to look as unimposing as possible.

“And you are?” Shepard asked the woman.

“My name is Helena Blake, and I have a business proposition for you, Spectre.”

Shepard crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “And what makes you certain I’d be interested in this ‘business proposition’?”

“I gave Wrex information in exchange for your… expertise in a certain business venture.”

Kaidan blinked. Shepard sighed. “Of course you did,” she said.

* * *

Dr. Michel’s clinic was closed for the night cycle by the time Kaidan and Shepard extricated themselves from Ms. Blake’s presence.  Shepard swore vehemently and marched back towards the transportation service terminal. Kaidan couldn’t tell if she was angry with the clinic’s closing or angry that Wrex had roped her into termination contract or just angry to be angry.  It was probably all three.  It summed up what he felt.

He hurried after her. “Commander.”

She forcibly punched the terminal’s GUI, her fingertips not registering as they went through the holographic display. Had they registered, Kaidan figured they’d be getting transport to Shin Akiba or another seedy district.

“Commander Shepard. Ma’am.”

Kaidan ran a hand through his hair and let out a curse of his own. He’d never seen her like this.  He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She stilled, hands dropping to her sides.  Her shoulder was warm through the course material of her sweater. A small tremor went through her.

“Shepard.” Kaidan really had no idea what to say to her, but gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll get the bastards.” He left the idea vague.  It surprised him when she reached up and patted his hand.

“Yeah,” she breathed. She squeezed his hand. “Yeah.”

Releasing her, Kaidan reached around and pulled up the menu to the terminal. POPULAR NIGHTLIFE was the first option to pop up on the screen. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.  She was looking at the terminal too, at where his finger had paused.

POPULAR NIGHTLIFE.

It was a stupid idea. Ridiculous even. There were regs and Shepard was under enough stress without having to worry about breaking them with him.

This was a Bad Idea.

But still: “C’mon. First round’s on me, hey?”

She let out a mirthless chuckle. “I’ll drink you under the table, Lieutenant.”

_Stupid. Stupid idea. Bad. Very Bad._

“I’d like to see you try, Commander.”

Nearly three hours later, a very drunken Commander Shepard pulled a very drunken Ashley Williams onto the dance floor with her. Williams, Joker, and Garrus all had the same idea and same club in mind that night. Not that Kaidan minded.  He clicked his glass against Garrus’ and downed yet another shot of whiskey.

Two? Six? How many had he had? Could he even count that high right now? Did it really matter?

 _Nope._  

He signaled the bartender for another round.

“Shepard really has no rhythm,” Garrus remarked over the pounding bass and Kaidan’s pleasant buzz. Garrus was watching the dance floor with interest.

Kaidan blinked when his eyes trained on Shepard and Ashley. _Whoa._

“I think you might be on to something there, Garrus.”

Shepard’s arms were… flailing about and the rhythm her body was pulsing to (if you wanted to call it _pulsing_ – it was more like _convulsing with epileptic fury_ ) was half a beat off the music’s tempo.  It was like she was racing the tempo. Hip-sway, arm-flail, beat, beat, hip-sway, hip-sway, beat, arm-flail, beat. Then she tossed her head and flailed into the other direction.

But she was smiling. That was the point of coming tonight.  Make her relax when she very obviously had no concept of the word. Williams was laughing her ass off, but after a moment she adopted the… the Shepard Flail and both were soon pin-wheeling through the pulsing bodies, swaying their hips and tossing their heads in alternating patterns.

Garrus let out a squawk. “What the hell?”

“I don’t think Shepard cares,” Kaidan told him. (More like slurred at him.)

“Yeah, but,” the turian said, “she could have saved us a little dignity.”

Joker laughed from his stool. “Dignity? What was that you attempted earlier?”  He waved his arms around a bit. “The Dance of Desperation.”  He turned back to his drink.

“Like to see you try it, human of glass structure,” Garrus said, pride injured. Kaidan examined his translator.

“I like my bones un-broken, thanks, alien of metal.”

Garrus changed the subject when Kaidan unhooked his translator from his collar and opened his omni-tool. “Wasn’t Liara supposed to come tonight?”

“Said she be by later,” the helmsman said. “All we have to do is tell her the Commander’s here and she’ll come running with open arms.”

Garrus studied Kaidan. “Really.” Kaidan hunched down in his seat, translator problems forgotten.

“Stop lookin at me, Garrus.”

“Not jealous, Kaidan?”

“I have no reason to be.”

Joker grinned. “So you and the Commander…?”

Kaidan’s brain caught up with the conversation. “What? No.” He sighed. “Just friends. Besides. Regs.”  He smiled as he watched Shepard have fun on the dance floor.

Joker coughed. It sounded distinctly like the word “bullshit.”

* * *

Ashley stirred. There was light in her eyes.

 _Oh._ _Ow_.

It felt like something was laying on her. She let out a groan and pushed at whatever was on top of her. It turned out to be the blanket, but whatever. It was heavy, her body was heavy, and her head hurt like a varren was gnawing on it.

And it was hot. Why was it so damn hot?

_Hurts to think._

Gooseflesh erupted where she exposed herself. Ash wanted to be too damn cold instead of too damn hot. How much did she have last night? And where were her clothes? She pushed some more of the blankets away and her hand collided with flesh.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Joker’s voice was muffled. Ash turned her throbbing head.  Joker was on his stomach with his head shoved up under a pillow. Ash had uncovered him too.  He wasn’t wearing any clothes either.  Pink scratches scored the expanse of his pale back. There was a dark purple bruise on his shoulder.

“Did we…?” Ash wondered aloud. _Well, what a nice romantic evening we must have had_. The thought would have been more amusing if she didn’t hurt so damn bad. And that bruise on his shoulder looked pretty bad. And…

_Oh. God._

“No, I’m just laying here naked for the fun of it,” he groused from beneath the pillow. “Thought it’d be a great joke.” He pushed the pillow off his head, his short hair sticking up in all directions and turned to look at her. The silly grin faded as his eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, shit. You’re not…”


	60. To Do Lists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Graphic violence is graphic

The knife was a rescue knife.

It was ugly for a knife, big and sturdy with a modified sheepsfoot blade and a safety-cutting hook on the hilt. The knife was standard-issue for Alliance rescue workers and medics in case of omni-tool power failure. When not in use, it could fold in on itself and slide into a cargo pocket or clip onto a utility belt. The blunt-nosed blade wasn't meant to stab things, let alone stab through cloth and flesh. Its blade was meant to slice accident victims from safety harnesses and cut through the inner sheath of armor to reach wounds for treatment.

Yet it sank into the chest of the scientist with only a minor application of force. Toombs wiped the back of his hand across of his mouth as he watched the scientist, Dr. Ewing, clutch futilely at the knife's thick hilt and collapse. He managed to find purchase and pull it enough to make the wound bleed. The doctor wheezed, spraying foaming blood, before his lung filled up enough to drown him. All the while Toombs watched and waited, not paying attention to how much time passed before the doctor died. He convulsed, hands reaching out to Toombs for help: the final panic for air before the body stilled, blood bubbling from the mouth. The pupils dilated, and the bowels relaxed.

Toombs waited years for this day. He'd _prepared_ for years for this day. His hands shook with elation.

"One down." His voice sounded strange in his own ears. Calm and hoarse, but weak. Weak like _they_ made him. Well, he wasn't weak anymore. He could finally defend himself against the monsters. Toombs felt high, giddy… _empowered_.

He _liked_ the feeling. He was ready to take on the enemy and do what needed to be done.

The screaming in his head still hadn't stopped. The roaring. He could still smell the ozone, the iron, the mass accelerator vapor. He could still see the thresher maws attacking, the worms jumping from the ground to drag his platoon under. He could still feel the doctors' hands on him, the needles beneath his skin. The screaming in his head was as loud as it ever was.

But there were other scientists to take care of, and he knew each by face and name and knew how to find them.

Maybe then. He could hope, right?

He spit on the body of his first tormentor. "That was for the First Year, Dr. Ewing."

Toombs stepped over the body of Dr. Ewing's lab assistant then stopped and looked down at him. He didn't remember seeing this one before, but: "You worked for the wrong people." Anyone he caught working for Cerberus was dead.

Maybe the screams would stop. They had to eventually. Right?

"The base is cleared out, boss."

Toombs looked up mouth twisting unpleasantly. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're sure?"

"Yeah. We checked. No operatives left. They're all dead." The lights on his armor flickered, the sign of a shield generator that was dangerously low or had been overtaxed. The merc didn't seem to notice. The solar-powered generator would recharge after they left the bunker.

Toombs nodded once then calmly pulled his pistol and shot the man in the head. "Good job." The man slid down the wall, blood streaking behind him. The armor lights went out.

He took care of the rest of the team, and then contacted his information broker.

"I need a new team. Cerberus was better armed than we realized."

His hands still shook, but maybe he could sleep tonight.

Yeah.

Sleep sounded nice.

* * *

Shepard shook her head as she went through her To Do List. Garrus was right. Dr. Michel knew nothing about the Cerberus group. She checked off her task and made a new task: _Get more information on Cerberus group._

Like it was that easy. She stood from her desk and paced.

If Cerberus hadn't gone to ground after the raid on their base, then they definitely would if she used her Spectre status to poke around Alliance records. _And the Alliance would say I'm abusing my powers of authority, especially if this group is black enough to have Sleepers in the right places._

_And the Council may very well back them up._

_Just because it's a human group._

The mission was to find Saren and stop him from using whatever the Conduit was. To find out what the Reapers were. And they were no closer to the Reapers or Saren than they had been at Feros. The turian had one hell of a head start.

She stepped back to her desk and added another task: _Eliminate crime bosses for Helena Blake._ Shepard resumed her pacing, boots stomping harder on the deck. Adding a termination contract to her To Do List rankled. She had yet to confront Wrex about Blake. Shepard was sure that confronting the krogan would lead to either weapons drawn or an all-out brawl. Wrestling a krogan certainly wasn't on her To Do List. Ever. Wrex was an asset to the team. His battle knowledge and contacts were essential if they were going to find Saren. She'd speak to him once she cooled off, if she ever did. She'd learned the hard way that things said in the heat of an argument never helped either party.

The last words she said to Gerry Guthmiller bubbled up in her memory. They hadn't been kind. And time hadn't erased the pain behind the breakup. Or maybe his death months ago was supposed to mean more than it did. Swallowing, she forced the memory away. You couldn't change the past. The only thing you could do was press on and change the future.

_Fuck the past._

The memory of the skinny slave girl, Talitha, rose to the surface of her thoughts. Shepard came to an abrupt stop then shifted directions, pace increasing. The girl had huddled away from humans, dark eyes glazed over in fear and malnourishment, and blew her brains out when Shepard had tried to help her. Shepard shuddered. She'd failed that girl. Her failure gnawed away at her confidence. What the hell was she doing if she couldn't save at least one frightened girl? A girl who had spent the last thirteen years being treated like an animal…

Her hands still shook, and she closed her eyes to clear her thoughts. She wasn't failing anyone else. She _couldn't_ fail anyone else.

_Fuck the past._

She was rounding the conference table once again when the door to her quarters hissed open.

A smile tugged at her lips. "Liara."

Carrying two mugs, Liara entered with a smile. She was a refreshing sight. She had taken it upon herself to make sure Shepard took a break at least once a day. Liara called it Shepard's Daily Break.

"Shepard." She set the cups on the table. "Don't let this one get cold."

"I'll try." Shepard rounded the table again, her stomach churning with anxiety and frustration, then went to her desk to grab her datapad. She wondered if she should confess her doubts to Liara, but thought better of it. It wouldn't do a damn thing. Only make Liara worry.

"You're pacing," Liara noted, drawing Shepard's attention. Maybe she was tenser than she thought.

"I'm working in an enclosed space."

"Is this a 'marine thing' again?" Liara sipped from her mug, half-lidded eyes watching.

Shepard abruptly sat in one of the chairs around the conference table. "No. It's just a restless Shepard thing." She grabbed the N7 mug, frowning when she realized Liara brought hot tea. "The hell's this?"

"Gunnery Chief Williams suggested it."

"Tea?"

 _This had better not be…_ Shepard took a tentative sip. _Mint._ "I'm going to kill her."

"What?" Liara looked up, surprised.

Shepard's only response was to grumble, "Troll."

"Is it not soothing?" The asari seemed stymied. Unfortunately she hadn't been present when Ash and Shepard were puking up their agave mojitos the other night. So she smiled at Liara to put her at ease. After all, she hadn't done anything wrong.

"Soothing isn't the word I'd use." She took another sip and made a face. Her taste buds told her the flavor was soothing, her memory told her what it tasted like as vomit. She set the mug down.

"I could—"

Shepard cut her off with a wave of her hand. "It's alright." She gestured with her datapad. "I've got mission planning to do anyway. We could use your biotics if you're up for it."

Liara's complexion around her cheeks changed colors to a darker blue. She was blushing. Shepard thought it was cute, but didn't press the subject. Instead she took a sip of the mint tea, forced herself to swallow it, and went over combat basics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia/Geekery/Weapon Pr0nz: The rescue knife described is based on the 915 Triage. It is not made to be used like Toombs did. Knife safety, responsibility, sharp, stabbity, blah, blah, blah...


	61. Herp. Hurp. Herk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I experimented with a different type of segue this chapter. I hope it isn't too confusing._

Mavigon was a ball of ice and snow without a breathable atmosphere and too far away from its star to have much in the way of light.  The ammonia-based planet was cast in darkness for all of its 43-year orbit around the small sun, Han.

The base held by John Castor, Helena Blake’s former partner, was out of the way and heavily guarded.  Shepard cursed her luck as the first of many rockets fired at _Precious_ from the defense turrets surrounding the base.

“Guess they know we’re here,” she said, agitated that they hadn’t any more information to go on than a few rogue communications from the comm buoy near the edge of the system.

“Bring it, ma’am,” Williams said a feral grin on her face. Garrus deployed countermeasures as Wrex gave a hearty laugh and thumped Williams in the back. It knocked the smile off her face.  Shepard laughed while Liara watched with obvious trepidation.

“Do you always run head long into danger?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Alenko told her with a shrug. “Yeah.”

“ _Goddess._ ”

_Herp. Hurp. Herk._

Dr. T’Soni overexerted herself within the first fifteen minutes of the fight inside the bunker.  John Castor’s small band of mercenaries was mostly turian and krogan.  Dr. T’Soni managed to take care of the two human biotics and one of the krogan, but her shield failed just as another, almost as large as Wrex, charged into her biotic bubble barrier.

It was then that each of the squad realized just how _afraid_ of krogan the young asari was.

“Oh, Goddess! A _krogan_!”

Garrus had cringed at the terrified pitch of her voice, but hadn’t been in a position to get to her. Two turians had pinned him in a corner on the far side of the base.  Wrex managed to get to her in time, giving the merc a good head-butt and punch in the jaw with his shot gun. Shepard and Williams had unloaded their shotguns on the merc.

Now Garrus lined up another shot as he laid a hand on the doctor’s back as she vomited at his feet.

_Again._

He thought maybe she’d already emptied her stomach and wondered, not for the first time, at the alienness of the asari. Maybe they had two stomachs? One for digesting, the other for re-digesting? The thought made him queasy.

“You alright, T’Soni?” he asked, taking his hand off her back long enough to take his shot. The crack of his sniper rifle drowned out her voice and the slug penetrated the shields of the turian with the white and green colonial markings of Oma Ker. The body slumped over a control panel.

“Say again?” He ducked for cover to let his rifle cool off and studied the asari. Even under the dim light of the bunker, she looked pale. Well, paler than her already pale blue color.

“Just…fine…” she managed weakly. “I’ll—I just need a moment.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Two more krogan in the corner.” He nodded in the direction and her eyes rounded. Spirits, she was afraid. “Wrex and Williams are taking care of them.”

He hopped up and lined up another shot. The barefaced female in his sights dropped behind cover. _Damn it._ “Alenko! On your six! Draw her out!”

_Hurk. Herp. Hurp._

Kaidan turned and looked at his flank. The merc on his HUD was hunkered down out of Garrus’ sights. Sweat trickled into his right eye, stinging and temporarily blinding him. The sudden loss of vision threw off his aim and the mass effect field went wide.  He couldn’t see the female turian, and he couldn’t get to his eye because of his visor.

“Shit.”

Kaidan blinked rapidly, trying to clear his eyesight.  He shook his head in an effort to do – well, something to get complete vision in his right eye back. Tunnel vision on an op wouldn’t help anything, and he had to take out that turian before she could injure or kill anyone. Something rammed into him and knocked him flat on his back, surprising him.  He yelled out as landed. Weight settled on his chest. He brought a fist up only to be blocked.

“Alenko!”

Shepard was sitting on him.

Belatedly he realized he’d done something he hadn’t done in years: He’d lost situational awareness when his vision had gone. The shock stilled him, brought him up short. It took him a moment to get his bearings.

“Commander,” he said conversationally even though it was difficult to breathe with the weight of Shepard plus her armor.  Shepard’s biotic barrier mingled with his, interacting.  It felt like a spider was running along his skin and up his spine.  He wanted to push her off.  All he could see was the fastener of her leg plating through the blurriness of his vision.

“Mind telling me what the hell that was about?” she asked just as conversationally as she blasted the now floating female merc with a carnage mortar. The recoil pushed her back, unforgiving ceramic against unforgiving ceramic. His chest plate groaned.

“A mistake?” he said, still blinking his right eye.  It wasn’t producing enough tears to flush the sweat, but it did make his nose run. Now his head was congested.

“A mistake,” Shepard repeated. There was an edge to her voice. “What happened?” She shot another target – another turian – but she hadn’t bothered to get up. Her barrier swept over his once more. Again it felt like spiders up his spine.

“Weak seals around my face,” he told her truthfully. “Sweat in my eye.”

She took her eyes off the battle field briefly to look at him. She’d dumped her helmet the moment the bunker airlock had chimed.  Her short brown hair was slicked down with perspiration. The base was darkened from too many shells hitting too many lights, but Kaidan was certain that her face was flushed from the exertion of battle.  And, as sappy as it sounded, he was almost certain he could drown in her eyes if she kept looking at him.  His breath caught. He wet his lips nervously. Shepard’s eyes darted down to watch.

“Next time,” she said, looking away and taking with her the floundering feeling, “use cover, Lieutenant.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” Kaidan’s heart still thudded in his ears, not from adrenaline but from something else entirely.

Finally, he remembered to breathe.

_Herk. Hurp. Hock._

The krogan merc wasn’t as big as Wrex.

_This must be the runt of the litter_ , Ash thought as she ducked and rolled away from the Runt’s swinging arms. The Runt was still formidable even for a runt.  He was still a seven foot tall wall of scaly muscle.

_Well, maybe six and a half feet tall…_

Ash had long since switched to her shot gun and fired a shot at him. The slugs pierced his shields and took out one eye, but it didn’t slow him down.  He only yelled and charged at her again.

Wrex slowed him. In fact, Wrex hit him so hard, the Runt slid to a stop at Wrex’s feet.

Between Wrex’s guttural yell and the crash of ceramic against ceramic and huge krogan against not-so-huge krogan, it was like watching a midair collision on an action vid. Only this action vid didn’t have any of the sappy love story crap with bad actors and no chemistry.

Wrex pulled out a knife and hacked at the plate on the smaller krogan’s head, surprising Ash. “What the hell?”  The Runt flailed, giving a scream of … what was that? Terror?

Ash had no idea the beasts could _feel_.

“Can’t regenerate if you –“ Wrex plunged the blade hilt-deep into the Runt’s exposed and bleeding head –“cut off the means to regenerate.”

“Good point,” she conceded.

_Hurp. Hock. Herk._

Liara shivered.  _Goddess._ Urdnot Wrex she’d gotten used to. A charging krogan three times her size?

_No. Never._

She spat out the last of the foul-tasting, dry-heaved stomach acid.  Humans had a neurotransmitter called adrenaline that attributed to their fight-or-flight response. Asari had a fight-flight-or-freeze response and the neurotransmitter responsible for that was called _enth-inatin_. Unfortunately for Liara, the exertion of her biotics co-mingling with her want of _not_ being there brought about the freeze part of the response and her body had reacted in kind.

_I am no soldier._

She swallowed. The weight of Garrus’ hand on her back was reassuring. Surely he would say something to Shepard, anything to sway the Commander from bringing her along on any more missions.  If this was what was referred to as ‘pulling one’s own weight,’ then they could drop her off at the next fuel depot. She didn’t even care if it was a truck stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Trivia/Geekery:**_ _Asari biology term is a random generated word that sounded close to epinephrine. The truck stop reference was a reference to_ _**A Star to Steer Her By**_ _, by_ _ **Shades of Mauve**_ _. Which everyone is reading. Right? Yes! Of course you are!_


	62. Language Barriers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Right. So. Sadly, this chapter is all fluff with no real action and no real story. I had wanted to finish up the Ash/Joker plot before Virmire but that didn't happen with this chapter. Sorry, guys. Between packing and stressing about moving, I haven't had much time to think about Redundant. I tried to cram some technobabble in. Hope it worked._
> 
>  
> 
> _Also, because technically I'm done packing, until August 15th updates should pick up a bit. (But no promises! We may close on our new home before then, and I'm writing original fic too.)_

" _Bosh'tet_!" Kaidan looked up from his locker as Tali's voice rang out across the cargo bay. " _Kin'adi pumiai stet melrah Kashyon meema diabi, Tin'uski nar Nedas_!"

Most quarians spoke galactic trade to overcome language barriers since the quarian language was not part of the standard translation software in most translators. It had to be purchased and downloaded separately. As a result, no one in the cargo bay knew what Tali shouted as she stormed to the elevator. She continued to shout at Garrus as the elevator doors closed. Garrus stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders then made his way towards the elevator to wait for it to come back down.

Kaidan had missed most of her exchange with Garrus as they bickered under _Precious_ 's chassis. He had only caught snippets of the conversation but had ignored it for the most part. The turrets on Mavigon had caused minor hull damage on the starboard side and a HEAT charge had made a mess of the aft axel.

"If the aliens start shooting up the ship," Williams said without looking up from the rifle disassembled on the armory table, "I'm putting bullets between their eyes." The rebreather over her mouth and nose filtered her voice. She heaved a sign of disdain and with nimble fingers swabbed the barrel with solvent to dislodge the build-up of slug shavings and eezo dust.

"Only a few more hours before the next drop, Williams," Kaidan reminded her. "At least Wrex hasn't joined in whatever's going on with Tali and Garrus." He put on a rebeather and then began disassembling his Kessler next to her, carefully putting its micro-eezo core to the side. A firearm had to be cleaned after each mission to keep the eezo dust from building up. Dust form eezo was a carcinogen, and well… he was walking proof of what eezo dust in large quantities could do to a body.

"Well, I know what to do to take care of him if he tries anything," she said then looked at him over the rebreather as if just realizing what she'd said. "I am so ready to shoot things, sir." She gave a grin.

He grinned back, enjoying the way her eyes tilted at the edges. "You and me both, Chief. But let's not pick fights with the aliens. Or Wrex," he added.

"No fun, LT."

* * *

Liara sipped her tea. The minty spice tingled against her mouth, a bite of cold following warmth. She sighed. She still didn't understand why Shepard seemed to detest the drink when before the last Liberty, Shepard didn't have a problem with it.

Karin walked into the mess hall with a tray of food and sat down beside her. Liara marveled momentarily at the new lines around Karin's eyes. Human skin was so interesting. Some looked so soft, like Shepard and Ashley. Others looked coarse and leathery, like Engineer Adams and Karin. Then there were the hairy ones like XO Pressly and Joker. "Liara."

She blinked, focusing on Karin's eyes. "Karin," Liara said with a smile. "How have you been?"

The doctor studied her a moment before giving her a knowing smile. Liara was stymied on what she was supposed to know however. "How much mint tea have you had?"

She blushed. "Not much. Just," she looked at her currently empty cup. _Empty?_ …Oops? "All of it."

Karin shook her head, the interesting colors of the individual strands of hair catching the light. "You know that will go straight to your head."

Liara giggled. "Too late?" She coughed and sat a little straighter. She did _not_ just _giggle_. Mint really did go straight to her head, didn't it? Oh, how many brain cells were dying due to oxygen deprivation? She giggled again, putting a hand over her lips in order to quell the giggles. They slipped out anyway. She giggled more at that thought.

Karin only chuckled, opened her mouth to speak. At that moment a foul-mouthed quarian marched passed the mess hall on her way to the sleeper pods. Liara blushed at the words, the translator giving very colorful explanations of each phrase. Her translator was programmed to provide the etymology behind each word in various languages, so she knew a transcript would be waiting for her in a new file on her omni-tool the next time she opened it. Quarians were always a fascinating and colorful species. Mother had been fond of them and had spoken about forgiveness for their past mistakes.

"What in the world?" was all Karin managed to say before Garrus appeared from around the corner. He followed Tali to the sleepers.

"Tali," he began, but Tali cursed at him using a phrase that was not in Liara's translation software. And she was very thankful, thank you very much, Goddess bless you.

Tali gave the turian a slight push then got into a sleeper, closing the door even as she swore at him some more. The last phase she spoke was in galactic.

Well, part of it.

"Go away, you… you _bosh'tet_!" The sleeper's door shut with final loud crack. She continued to yell obscenities through the glass door. Sound proof, the pods were not. There was a reason the pods put one into temporary cryostasis.

Garrus grunted but spoke to the sleeper anyway, crossing his arms as he stood there. "You misunderstood what I said."

Tali's voice was muffled. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"You did, Tali."

"I didn't, _bosh'tet_."

Liara listened to them go back and forth a while before looking over at Karin as she ate her food. "I wonder how long they're going to go on."

"A while, probably," Karin said. "Tali didn't remove her envirosuit for the cryostasis to affect her, and they're both very stubborn."

"I have a shotgun!" Tali's muffled voice rang out.

"You should have brought it with you, Tali," Garrus told her. "Get out of there and talk to me."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Get out of there."

"Go to Tin'uski hell."

"I don't even know what that is, Tali. Come on. Out."

"No!"

"Yes."

Liara picked at her food. "Do you think she'll use her shotgun?"

Karin thought about it a moment. "Doubtful. The Commander would have kittens."

"Oh, Goddess! She's...she's pregnant? When we melded, I, I didn't think humans could... could..."

Karin only shook her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Codex**  
> 
> 
> **Weapons, Armor, and Equipment: M-72 HEAT Warhead**
> 
>  
> 
> Commonly called a HEAT charge or frag grenade, the **Armax Arsenal M-72 HEAT Warhead** is a High Explosive Anti-Tank explosive that can create a stream of very high-velocity metal shrapnel in a state of superplasticity to punch through solid armor. Most HEAT charges are deployed using shoulder-mounted rifles that use mass accelerator technology, though Armax Arsenal manufactures a miniature version that can be hand-tossed and is frequently used by many mercenary groups in the Traverse. (The discus-type Hahne-Kedar Mark 14 Grenade with a HEAT upgrade installed is most commonly used by the Systems Alliance 103rd Marine Division. The Mark 14 is usually colloquially referred to as a pancake by troops in order to differentiate between the two manufacturers.)
> 
> HEAT charges, contrary to their acronym, do not rely on thermal interaction for success and use the pressure of the explosive charge to force holes into the armor.
> 
>  **Trivia/Geekery:** HEAT shaped missiles were first introduced to combat theater during WWII and they use the Monroe Effect to force the metal into the superplasticity state.
> 
> While I disagree with the sleeper pods being cryostasis pods for medical reasons and resource reasons, it does state in the wiki that that is what they are. And it made Tali getting into the pod to avoid Garrus that much funnier.


	63. Careful Diplomacy

Shepard couldn't understand why the planet was named Amaranthine. Gran had grown amaranth on Earth and later on Mindoir. The species Gran used as a cover crop had golden stalk-like flowers. The planet was shadowed in deep twilight even during midday. The sky was a deep blackish-purple. Its small dwarf star only just barely stood out from the rest of the stars that dotted the sky. In fact, it reminded Shepard of a small moon. Amaranthine looked nothing like Gran's amaranth.

She swallowed as she eased _Precious_ down a ravine. Now was not the time to be thinking about the home she could never return to.

"Be ready for a double cross," she told the crew to take her mind off Gran's farm and her 'victory' garden. "I don't give a damn if Helena Blake lacked the bravado before. She's got power now."

"Blake isn't stupid, Shepard," Wrex grumbled. The krogan was wedged behind Alenko.

"Neither am I, Wrex." She shot him a look over her shoulder. "And while we're on the subject: The next time you decide to bring me into one of your schemes, I want to know about it first."

He rumbled a laugh. "Sorry, Shepard. Habit." He didn't sound the least bit apologetic, but Shepard let it slide. Getting into a fight with Wrex still wasn't at the top of her _To Do_ list. It remained firmly at the top of her _Don't Ever_ list.

The Mako eased to a stop at the coordinates Helena Blake had given to Shepard when Blake's two partners were dealt with. There were only a few large and small crates neatly stacked within view of the Mako's high beams.

"Nice," Shepard said with a sigh. "Be ready for anything."

"There's a wireless signal coming from the coordinates," Alenko told her. "Scanning. No viruses detected. Signal's being routed through a small tower system. Low tech. Simple decryption. …There's a text message for you, ma'am."

"Of course there is."

Shepard looked over at the amber screen, leaning close to Alenko as she read the text message quickly. The musky scent of Alenko's armor combined with his aftershave confounded her senses. She swallowed the feelings quickly. Now was not the time to think about Kaidan.

_Spectre Shepard,_

_You've done a world of service. I've already increased my profits. As promised, no slavery, no drugs._

_I have another proposition for you if you wish to chat in person. Just follow the coordinates attached to the message._

_As for payment, you'll find Kassa Fabrication armors and a few biotic amps for you and your crew. And Wrex. You know as I do they will fetch a fine price on the Market or the Citadel._

_Sincerely,_

_Helena Blake  
Le Tigri Gialli_

Shepard frowned at the message but made no move to ease back into her seat. Alenko cleared his throat as he read the message. He shifted in his seat but made no other move away from Shepard's presence as she crowded him.

"Kassa Fabrication is top of the line, Commander," he commented.

"Blood money," she responded, easing back. "Did the scan pick up anything other than armor?"

He shook his head. "No, ma'am. We'd have to do individual scans on the software to see if there are any tracers."

"Shepard to Normandy." Her fingers drummed distractedly on her knee. "Requesting pick up of cargo. Have the recon team go through it inch by inch and scan everything before bringing it on board."

"Aye, aye," Joker affirmed. "ETA: Three minutes. Recon team ready to deploy."

Shepard revved the engine. "We won't be here when you arrive," she told him as she threw _Precious_ into reverse and backed over a cliff. Her stomach lurched as she activated the eezo core to slow their decent.

"Uh, okay," Joker said over the sound of the thrusters. "Where will you be, Commander?"

"Giving Helena Blake a piece of my mind." Shepard's voice was hard.

After a moment Joker replied, "With you being a biotic and all, I'm not sure to take you seriously or not."

* * *

Helena Blake met them at the airlock of her run-down base. Flanked by Alenko, Garrus and Williams, Shepard stepped through and allowed Blake to give them a tour of the facility.

_Not stupid, my ass._

Shepard wondered if the base was permanent. Blake didn't strike her as having much to begin with, but resolved to use Blake to her advantage. The woman owed her.

"Commander Shepard," Blake said with flourish and a smile. She gestured around as her long dress picked up dirt from the base's deck. "I owe you a debt of gratitude. With those two idiots out of the way, this syndicate will do away with anything attached to slavery or red sand dealing."

Shepard didn't return the smile. "And you owe me more than armor and a few biotic amps." It came out more calm than she felt.

Blake's smile faltered. She blinked. It was all Shepard could do to not roll her eyes. Had the woman really thought Shepard was in her pocket?

"With a better foothold on your syndicate, you've got a larger ear to the ground."

Her expression slid into an affronted frown. "Yes, but –"

"Any information you have on Saren Arterius, Matriarch Benezia or geth, I want to know before you take it to an information broker."

Blake crossed her arms defiantly. "Information is power, Commander Shepard."

"Power I just gave you," Shepard argued. "I took out both your partners without breaking a sweat or losing a man, and they had better defenses than this place. All you got for me was some armor and a location for Wrex to a turian smuggler. You owe me more than that for taking my time away from total galactic annihilation."

The woman's left eyebrow rose a fraction. "A little melodramatic, don't you think?"

_Not if you knew what I do_. "I don't have time for this bullshit." Shepard activated her omni-tool and replayed Saren and Benezia's recording. "Reapers. A rogue Spectre is trying to revive an ancient machine race to destroy all life in the galaxy." She eyed Blake. "You help me, and I don't haul your ass off to rot in a turian prison."

"I would die before going to prison," Blake warned, voice cold. "I would most certainly kill before going to prison." As a warning, the hisses of rifles and pistols opening echoed throughout the small room.

Shepard took a step forward, not even bothering to draw her pistol. She narrowed her eyes. "Geth are attacking human colonies with a fucking rogue Spectre and trying to find a way to destroy the galaxy, and I'm supposed to care whether or not you want to go to jail?" she demanded. She crossed her arms, gestured with one hand. "You're small time, I get that. So here's the deal: Fuck jail time. You give me any intel you hear about Reapers, geth, Saren Arterius, or Matriarch Benezia, and I don't blow your base to hell and back in an orbital strike."

Blake paled. The Commander only eyed her coolly. The woman really was a small fry.

"I'll… I'll take that deal, Spectre."

* * *

Garrus paced the length of Shepard's quarters. "You aren't going to turn over the coordinates to the authorities?"

"No," Shepard told him from her seat the conference table. She reached for her coffee cup. It was still warm. "She's a useful informant."

Alenko gestured with his datapad. "There are a few leads we could trace down already."

"But you can't—"

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me? I don't think I heard you right."

Garrus looked contrite, stopping short at the end of the table. "That's not what I meant. I—"

"Translator glitch then?"

The turian gurgled something. It wasn't a word the translator recognized, just a sound of frustration as he sat heavily in a human-designed chair that didn't fit his body.

"Damn it, Shepard, she's a criminal!"

"She's a contact I can use. Now she owes me."

"She doesn't owe you. You paid her back for helping Wrex."

"I can pay my own debts, kid," Wrex interrupted. He leaned back slightly. The chair squeaked ominously. "Besides, Shepard's a Spectre. We need informants, pyjaks or nathnaks. It's the only way we'll get an upper hand on Saren."

"Are you really going to bomb her base in an orbital strike if she doesn't cooperate?" Williams asked.

Shepard shrugged. "She's probably in the process of pulling up shop, so it wouldn't matter either way."

"Ah, come on, Commander," Joker groused over the MC. "Just once. A little strike."

"We'll worry about orbital strikes when we meet up with Saren," Shepard told him, took a sip of coffee. "He's on the move, and he's got a geth army. If we're lucky, they'll all be on the ground for you to take out."

"There haven't been any major geth sightings in weeks, Commander," Alenko said, looking through the datapads that were scattered on the table. "Let's hope he's in the Terminus Systems."

"That would be our luck," Williams grumbled.

"Alright," Shepard said wearily, not wanting to worry if Saren was out of their reach. "Garrus, keep on your contacts at C-Sec. Something's got to give there. Anything they find, bring it to me. Wrex, see if you can dig up anything using your contacts. Tali, can the Flotilla provide any intel?"

Tali shook her head. "I can't even contact them until my Pilgrimage is complete." She twisted her hands together nervously. "Though… technically it is complete, but as I said before: I'm not leaving until I see this mission through and Saren and his geth brought to justice."

Shepard nodded. "Thank you, Tali."

"You have something to bring back to the Flotilla?" Garrus asked. His mandibles fluttered, a gesture Shepard recognized as nervousness.

"I gave her a copy of the data from the Armstrong Incursions months ago," she told him.

"I'm still not talking to you, _bosh'tet_ ," Tali reminded him. Loudly.

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "Do I want to know?"

Tali gave a small shake of her head. "Not worth your time, Shepard," she said before Garrus had a chance to speak up. "It doesn't affect the mission. I have some repairs to make on a combustion manifold in engineering. Permission to be dismissed?"

Shepard nodded, filing away the conversation for a later date. There was something wrong, and Shepard was determined to find out what. Anything personal could disrupt the mission, and she wanted everyone at their best. "We're done here. Final reports are due in thirty minutes. Crew dismissed."

The team filed out of her quarters, Alenko's eyes lingered on her a moment before he turned and left.

Anything personal could disrupt the mission, she reminded herself.

"Commander," Joker's voice said, startling her from her thoughts, "you've got an incoming transmission from Arcturus. Looks like the brass just can't get enough of your help."

_So much for handling personal business before it disrupts the mission._ She rubbed her brow. "Patch it through to my private terminal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trivia/Geekery:** There are over sixty different species of amaranth ranging in colors from gold to red. The name of Helena Blake's 'gang' is the very unoriginal name: The Yellow Tigers. The translation should be Italian.


	64. Space Cow Rodeo

Shepard sat back in her chair, a tight lump forming in her throat as she stared helplessly at the holographic display of the Fifth Fleet Commandant. Admiral Steven Hackett only stared back impassively, blue eyes cool and assessing.

Four dead scientists with connections to a top secret project on Akuze.

 _Akuze_.

Losing her entire unit. Nearly losing her life on colony that had previously been full of life. That one deep, dark, black mark on her record. The blemish that had nearly ruined not only her Alliance career, nearly killed her, but had taken everything she had, everything she was, and everything she would be and turned it on its ass then trampled gleefully on it. It was that one reoccurring nightmare she tried so desperately to forget. To ignore the pain and fear. Life went on. It had to. But the implications…

_Holy shit._

She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her paper-dry mouth. She felt raw and empty. She had to stop herself from pushing her fingers through her hair in front of Admiral Hackett.

“You’re saying _our_ scientists were involved?” she asked the Admiral after she’d found the ability to speak again. He was calling from his office on Arcturus. The plaques on the wall behind him were grainy on the display. An aide handed him a datapad.

“I can’t get any information on what they were working on,” he told her. There was underlying tension in his otherwise calm demeanor. He glanced at the datapad then nodded to his aide, giving it back to the man. “The project records were sealed.”

She shook her head — denial. A coincidence. There was no way… “This can’t have anything to do with what happened to me on Akuze.”

“There might be more to it than Akuze, Commander.” He paused, looking to the side and giving a dismissal gesture to his aide — or someone else— before speaking again. “I’m sending you a burst of classified data.”

“Well, this just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered. She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger as the _Normandy_ intercepted the data and decrypted it. She knew the _Normandy’s_ communication system would wipe the data packet information from the comm buoy, as per standard protocol.

“Dr. Wayne, the fifth scientist involved in the project worked with Armistan Banes on a different project. Also classified and records sealed. What I was able to dig up is in the file I just sent.”

“Kahoku,” Shepard whispered. There was very little in the file. A few names, the location of a base, the deaths of another recon team. One survivor. Another piece of a puzzle.

All of it meaningless until she found the missing pieces, made the connections.

“It’s a long shot, Shepard. You said yourself the beacon on Edolus was placed directly on the thresher maw’s nest. Between Edolus and Akuze, we’ve got sixty-five soldiers dead. If Akuze was more than an accident, we need to know.”

“Admiral, have you been able to find out anything about the Cerberus group?”

Hackett shook his head, blew out a puff of air in frustration. “No, I’ve still got my people combing through the encrypted data you sent last week from your mission on Binthu. IA is chomping at the bit to take a look at the data. And a friend gave me a thinly disguised warning to back off. She knows something, but…” He shook his head and leaned away from the camera. “I’ve pushed as much as I’m able to on this end. For now.”

She nodded. “What can I do, Admiral?”

“I’m transmitting Dr. Wayne’s last known coordinates. If he’s still alive, I’m authorizing you to offer him immunity for his information. To hurt Cerberus.”

“Immunity? Sir, that’s—”

“I can’t tell you how to handle this, Shepard,” the Admiral interrupted. “Only what we’re willing to do to get his cooperation. If he’s alive,” he added. The look that he sent Shepard chilled her blood. He was giving her the opportunity to kill this Dr. Wayne if she wanted. Did she want revenge on this man? Or could she use this man to take out the real evil? Cerberus.

The rogue group was not only responsible for a rear admirals’ death but for turning one of her crewmates against her. Their deaths were on Cerberus and its commanders.

_God._

“I’d like to voice my opinion against immunity,” she told him. “I’d like justice for my unit, sir. Hell, for both of them. Justice for Admiral Kahoku. If he played a part in their deaths, immunity won’t give them that justice. I’ll bring him in for questioning. If he’s still alive.”

Hackett nodded. “Commander.” He paused, leaned forward, and addressed her off the record. “Shepard. What you do with this is up to you. I just thought you would want to know.”

And she read between the lines – if Shepard chose to take Dr. Wayne out, Hackett would cover for her. If she needed that particular brand of closure, she had the authority, without having to use her Spectre status. A lump formed in her throat as she listened to Hackett. She forced herself to pay attention, to keep her face as neutral as his. Business as usual.

“Dr. Wayne is part of ExoGeni Corp’s catalog team on Ontarom.”

“Catalog team?” Why did Ontarom sound so familiar?

“The orbit of Ontarom’s moon, Thonal, has been slowly decaying since the formation of the Newton system. ExoGeni Corp is one of the corporations representing the Alliance to help catalog and preserve Ontarom’s genetic diversity along with Heyuan Genomics. Dr. Wayne is there representing the Alliance as one of ExoGeni’s lead scientists. He heads the toxicology department.”

Shepard snapped her fingers, remembering how she knew of Ontarom. “Space cows.”

“Yes. I believe Ontarom is the space cow’s home planet. But ExoGeni Corp breeds them on every planet they have an interest in. The company advocates the space cow has more nutritional value than vat grown beef or earth cattle beef.” He rolled his blue eyes — clearly a non-believer.

“I’ll check out the coordinates, Admiral,” she told him. “Maybe we can save this scientist from whoever is doing this and find out what he knows about the two projects. Without offering him immunity,” she added decisively.

“Good luck,” Admiral Hackett said with a nod. Shepard thought she saw a thread of approval in his visage. “Fifth Fleet out.”

_God._

_Akuze._

After the briefing with her crew, she relived the ordeal in her sleep that night.

* * *

The gas giant Juncro loomed, a golden-green marble against the backdrop of stars. Joker adjusted the external cams to get a closer look while Serviceman Silas Crosby, the ship’s Photographer’s Mate, sitting to Joker’s right, grunted in consternation that the hi-res digitals were suddenly out of focus.

“Suck it up, man,” Joker told him.

Dirty clouds of hydrocarbons, sulfur and chlorine streaked and marred what could otherwise pass for an oblate Golden Delicious apple that rolled on its side around the distant orange star. The jovian was “tipped on its side” like Uranus; what was considered the planet’s “north pole” faced the star Newton. But there the similarities to Uranus stopped. Uranus’s “south pole” faced Sol. And Juncro was just shy of Jupiter’s diameter and mass; it wasn’t icy. Soon it would be all Joker could see out the window as they used the planet’s massive gravity well to “sling shot” them into the inner system to the terrestrial planet Ontarom.

Glancing back out _Normandy_ ’s window, Joker saw an H II region, a shiny blob of red on _Normandy_ ’s horizon, just beyond the ringless planet. The region where hot stars were ionizing the hydrogen in the interstellar matter was nearly six hundred light years away from their current location. Even with mass effect drive cores as advanced as they were, the voyage could take years just to get to there. Probably why the area the Kepler Verge had gone mostly unmapped by the CitSpace species, Joker thought. It was a big expanse, all things considered.

Sometimes just staring into that great expanse scared the shit out of him. Like it could swallow him whole, and no one would give a damn.

“Approach vector Bravo-Seven-Niner-Yankee,” Hendricks reported, drawing Joker’s attention back to the helm. She gave the countdown to Juncro’s magnetosphere breach as Joker’s spectrometry holo-panel lit up, sent to him by Nav, giving him a spectrograph of the planet and its satellites. He inspected it for abnormalities and fluctuations before pushing it aside. Three of the moons were little more than S-type NEOs with radii of about twenty kilometers each that had managed to get snagged by the planet’s massive gravity-well. Those were the ones they had to watch out for on approach. The asteroid-like satellites sped around Juncro in a tight but irregular and elliptical orbit, circling the world in one to two Earth days. Joker didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the _Normandy_ crashed into one. Or if one crashed into the _Normandy_. Nightmare scenarios had been drilled into his head at flight school; he didn’t need a refresher course. Collisions happened all the time —and the media fed on the tragedies like carnivores fed on wounded prey. _I’ll be damned if it’s going to happen to us._

Several systems blinked as _Normandy_ roared towards Juncro, typical of electrical systems — even on a state-of-the-art frigate like the _Normandy_ —when entering such a powerful magnetosphere. Backups immediately kicked into place, power loss was less than a second.

The jovian hadn’t been completely scanned and mapped, but according to the Normandy’s findings, it had a healthy abundance of metallic hydrogen in its lower atmosphere over a mostly metallic core. They would be able to discharge the drive core on their way around the planet.

Joker waited for the “all clear” confirmations to light the window to his right and sent the magnetosphere and other planetary data to Engineering, XO and several other stations in the CIC. When the board was “green,” he dragged and dropped the proper commands into the window to his left. Now all they had to do was ride the gravity around the planet and allow it to propel them further into the system.

“It’s slingshot time, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “Systems are green. Optimal thrust achieved. Compensating for satellite gravitational fluctuations. Engineering, calculate time of drive core discharge and report.”

“Aye, aye,” Adams’ voice confirmed. Less than a minute later he had the calculations he needed and sent the report to Nav to confirm trajectory. They were on course.

The bells sounded and boots stomped on the deck behind him. It was a hazardous time for shift change of the techs, but everything went smoothly. Joker still had five more hours on his shift and Hendricks had more than that on hers. Every once and again, Pressly got a burr up his ass to switch the shift-change schedules around. Joker didn’t know if it was to keep everything from getting boring on such a long cruise or if the XO just liked to piss off the people who happened to like schedules and order. When Shepard had been XO, she hadn’t deviated from her original shift-change schedule once. But she _liked_ schedules and order. Joker _liked_ schedules and order.

Pressly just didn’t like anyone. That had to be it.

_Definitely no fun._

“Welcome back, Chief Williams, Lieutenant Alenko,” Hendricks said pleasantly drawing Joker’s attention away from his inner thoughts. Williams and Alenko replied just as pleasantly, and Joker wanted to get off the bridge as quickly and quietly as possible. Maybe hide in a hole somewhere for a very long time.

Actually, no —Joker wanted to install mirrors onto _Normandy_ ’s helm and the sides of his chair. At least then when Ashley— _No._ He stopped that train of thought right there. _Her name is Williams._ That was the whole fucking problem. He’d gotten too close. Too damn close. And yeah. He needed mirrors on the sides of his chair. Big-ass mirrors that came with neon signs in candy-apple red that read, “Go Away” and “Silence! Pilot Working” and "Get Lost." With multiple translations. Because it was just like some idiot to claim a misunderstanding and not leave him the hell alone.

Especially when he asked so nicely.

At least then when _Williams_ came onto the bridge he could at least be ready for a fight— _read the sign, Williams_ —or, god forbid, be ready to talk to the woman if she came onto the bridge with a directive from a superior. _Damn MaRINEs_.

He hadn’t even noticed Williams’ name on the schedule chit for bridge duty. But he hadn’t been looking for it either. She hadn’t had bridge duty in a while; scuttlebutt was that she’d volunteered for salvage team duty. Which had to be some kind of cosmic joke because that usually required heavy use of a good omni-tool and its fabber. Last he knew, her omni-tool was a piece of shit she never bothered to keep up to date and the fabber was too small to squeeze a dick into.

Avoiding him. Just as Joker was avoiding her. _Damn her._

_Damn her._

_Damn her to Hell and back._

There was good reason they were avoiding each other though. She could have told him to go to hell the other night. But she didn’t. And she should have. He would have. From what he remembered and the bruises in weird places he’d noticed the next morning, he could barely stand, could barely get around. …At least he didn’t think she told him to fuck off. Oh, wait. She did. So he did.  He probably wouldn’t have woken up at all if she’d told him to go to hell and he didn’t take no for an answer. (And didn’t that just sit oh-so-well in his already churning belly?) He would have known, damn it. He prided himself on control. Always. And besides, he’d watched her run drills with the rest of the marines in the cargo bay; Joker knew she could pack a punch if she had to. She had a mean left hook. She especially loved using it on Gun Dog Fredericks. The corporal never seemed to be able to block her or learn when she was going in for his chin.

And here he was _thinking_ about her. Again. That curvy body, the lithe form. The look in her eyes. No one had ever looked at him like that.

 _Drunk._ She’d been drunk. He’d been drunk. But. Still, no one had ever looked at him like she had.

He’d pushed regs before, but he’d never actually broken them. All he needed now was to get a court martial for…for this _bullshit_. Then what the hell would he do? Go live a “normal” life as a civilian after his dishonorable discharge for fraternizing with a noncommissioned officer? Go live with his mom on Arcturus and put up with her chaotic life? Go live with Dad and Hilary and —? The thought of his dad brought him up short. He studied a read-out without really seeing it. At least Dad was recovering from the Arcturus bomb. Joker had received the email from his stepmother that Dad was finally home and walking fine now. Mom the Second was working on a lawsuit to get the money to pay for cloned tissue so Dad could have his flesh and blood leg back. The physical therapy and the leg prosthetic were working for now and Dad could work the fields, but Dad was still traumatized by the fact he no longer had his leg below the knee.

Maybe Joker could be a fucking farmer on Tiptree like his dad. Two gimpy farmers. _Come and buy our fucking produce. Creaky-Leg Farms. Just give us a little bit longer to go and get it for you. We’re a bit slow._

Joker mentally shuddered. Surgeries and designer drugs were one thing; amputation… No. Just no.

_Fucking terrorists. If it had been terrorists. No one’s claimed the blame._

Or fly aircars on the colony. Transport shit. That sort of thing. _Yeah. Sure. Great_. _A fucking taxi driver._ Just what he wanted to do after flying a state-of-the-art frigate for the Alliance. The blacklisted creaky-legged ex-Alliance pilot would be such a productive member of society.

“Joker,” Williams greeted. She sounded neutral. As she had for the last week and a half. Ever since Liberty on the Citadel. Ever since he’d…she’d…they’d —

She had a nice body.

_Damn, it’d been nice._

She was a lot softer than she looked. Her hands—

 _Fuck._ “Williams,” he answered, mind swirling with irritation at the situation. He brought up the spectrograph of the planet again, pretended to study it. If he didn’t say anything, Alenko, who sat beside him relieving Crosby of bridge duty, would get suspicious. The biotic Boy Scout. Sure, Alenko and the Commander flirted on the battlefield and sometimes on Liberty —and Joker had ragged on Alenko about it—but Joker sure as shit knew they weren’t fucking. No way would Alenko be able to keep that sort of thing to himself. No way. Not with the way the biotic had been so uncomfortable when Joker had ragged on—well, hell, maybe they _were_.

_Shit._

Joker had been kicking himself for the last week and a half. All for a piece of ass he thought was someone else. How the fuck had he screwed up so royally? Yeah, alcohol could sometimes affect his prescriptions. But he didn’t think he had had enough to impair his judgment that much. He’d conveniently forgotten to take the ones he knew would be a problem. He thought he had everything under control. He thought the asari maiden behind the bar had been willing. Then he’d awoken naked next to Williams remembering very little of what happened the night before.

What he did remember made him ache.

Made him want her all the more.

_God._

Her _hands_ …

_Ah. Hell no._

Why the hell hadn’t she said no? Was “no” such a bad word? He shoved the memories forcibly aside and called up another screen. _No. No. No. See? Easy. No. No._

Thinking like that — thinking about _her_ — would get him in trouble. _Had_ gotten him into trouble.

Holy shit, oh, god, was he in trouble if anyone found out. _Shit._ Shepard was going to _neuter_ him. The Alliance was going to kick his ass out. Then _Beck_ was going to neuter him _again_ for leaving her in when he was out. Because he’d fucked up. She’d never really wanted to join the Alliance to begin with. And then she’d probably bitch about _Feelings_ and shit. What was it about women and Feelings, anyway?  Hell. Forget gender. What was it about _people_ that made him wish he had the bone density to punch them out?

And Ash was no help. She’d just been… cold after he’d claimed he’d thought he’d been with an asari. Because he had thought exactly that. And was honest with her. And it’d been a whim too. Something fun and a stupid to do while on Liberty. Because why not? He was the best damn pilot in the fleet. Fuck creaky bones.

It wasn’t until he’d blurted it out that the memories slowly started oozing to the surface. Remembering her under him, over him. With him. And then he’d had to watch Ash’s face go from that, that _look_ to confused, then from confused to surprised to… to something like disappointed, maybe even hurt.

Well, fuck her.

And Beck? She was his best friend. In his book, he was allowed to fraternize with his best friend. They’d known each other all their lives. And they were currently the same rank. And she didn’t mind him banging asari. …That much.

Sort of.

Probably.

…Hopefully.

And, anyway, Ash wouldn’t understand. She was the outsider to him and Beck. Besides, Beck wasn’t—they weren’t dating. He didn’t date shipmates.

He didn’t fuck shipmates either.  He’d told Beck that. Then he remembered the last time he and Beck had been alone together. Blow jobs didn’t count, damn it. Those were _benefits_. Side effects to a twenty year friendship.

_Shit._

It was all Joker could do to keep from squirming in his seat. He could feel eyes on him, beady eyes, hairy eyes, laser eyes, dagger eyes. Squinting and accusing eyes. How the hell had he fucked up so badly? How the hell had he let Williams fuck him up so badly? It wasn’t—

Joker noticed a grav anomaly and, thanking the gods of disruptions, compensated, announcing over the MC in the most normal and official voice he could manage when he did it. The techs adjusted their screens and readings as necessary and within seconds he had more information from them. At least the ship was behaving the way it should.

“Are you two still fighting?” Beck asked when all had returned to normal and the _Normandy_ continued along its sweeping trajectory. She eyed Williams in the way Joker noticed most women he’d seen assess potential threats to relationships—the beady eye. Beck’s beady eye was enough to sear the upper layer of skin from anything she zoned in on. Wondering how Williams wasn’t melting into a puddle of sticky, but sexy, goo, he gave a thoughtful frown. Beck had never done that before.

Oh, god. Panic blossomed in his gut. Was she going to have the _Feelings_ talk with him again?

“What are you talking about?” Williams wanted to know.

Beck looked from Joker, who was trying to glare and not seemed like a herd animal in head lamps, to Williams, who was watching at the weapons systems’ readouts but not really seeing them, and then back to Joker. “My mistake,” she said, but her expression told Joker he owed her an explanation. _Like hell._ “Read your tone of voice and body language wrong.”

That Joker was even thinking in terms of a relationship with Beck made him ill. They were friends. There were benefits, but at the end of the day, he trusted Beck. _Friends._

Williams was different. Not really a friend. A pretty face that was fun to play cards with. Who didn’t appear to judge his disability. And seemed to listen to him when he talked, even if he was just blowing smoke out his ass most of the time. Like Beck.

Well, maybe they _were_ friends. _Shit._ Well, fuck it. Not anymore.

He had trusted Ash— _Williams_ too. And she had been too drunk to say no. Or maybe he had been too drunk to say no.

Shit, he hated people. Complicated, messy. Idiots. He just wanted to fly and forget everything else existed. So that’s exactly what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to deal with this now. Not on shift. Not now. Not till he was good and ready and both Beck and Williams could go to hell until he was good and ready. He was not thinking about Ash or the way she’d all but purred in his arms. Yeah.

“We are not fighting,” Joker asserted, mostly because Alenko was looking at him now—giving his version of the beady eye—and all Joker needed was for the damn Boy Scout to go running to the Commander with his suspicions. “Just not talking.” Before Beck could open her mouth he added, “Leave it alone, Beck. It doesn’t affect our jobs.”

Alenko looked back over his seat at Williams—softened a bit—then glanced at Joker. “So, what, now we have to put up with your awkward silent treatment of each other?” he asked.

_Damn him._

Beck added, “Again?” She crossed her arms, thin lips pouting.

_Damn her._

The bridge was silent a moment before Williams spoke up. “Yep.”

_Damn her most of all._

* * *

Space cows were inelegant creatures. Part fox-dog, part raccoon, part dinosaur, part something else — all alien. They walked in a trotting, clownish gait, bumping into one another, bleating in a sing-song, mourning warble that was just as hard on the ears as their bodies were on the eyes. They had a red coat of soft-looking, downy fur with a mixture of white and black spots in various patterns, but Ashley didn’t know how they survived in the hot climate of Ontarom. The balmy afternoon heat of the canyon cliff the squad sat on was playing havoc with Ash’s ability to breath. She checked her armor’s readouts again on the new Nexus omni-tool Adams had requisitioned for her. It was an uncomfortable 60 degrees Celsius even at their present altitude overlooking the lush valley and raging river four kilometers below. The omni-tool itself made her smile – it had a decent sized fabber and the processing power of God. She could melt down _anything_. For the first time since joining the Alliance, she was having fun doing salvage duty.

 _Hear me roar, salvaged goods._ In her mind she gave a wicked chuckle and twirled her Evil Mustache of Doom.

She turned her attention back to Shepard, a lopsided grin on her face. Because: What. The. Fuck. Ash had yet to put the scope of the rifle to her eye to give Shepard a status report of the bunker nestled in an alcove on the other side of the canyon nearly six hundred meters away. She simply watched her commanding officer interact with the space cow like Shepard did it for a living. It had surprised the hell out of Ashley when Shepard got out of _Precious_ and _fed_ one of the damn things while they were supposed to be doing reconnaissance. The alien creature looked like it wore a black mask over its silver, deep-set eyes, a pattern Ash had only seen on earth raccoons. With its almost human-like fingers, it plucked the proffered rice cake out of Shepard’s outstretched hand and greedily nibbled, unafraid of the strange human with treats. It blinked its alien eyes—the damn things had three pupils, like a mutated goat or something—one eye, then the other.

“Careful, Shepard,” Garrus said. His reverberating voice sounded apprehensive, like he was giving the thing the turian version of the laser eyeball. “That one looks a little shifty.” Ash knew he was an urbanite, but _damn_. How could a space cow—something you ate—look... _shifty_? It wasn’t like space cows were all going to hold a herd meeting, or whatever, and decide to take over the galaxy.

They had to have a shuttle for that.

The turian laid prone on his belly, like Ash, eye at the scope of his sniper rifle. Ontarom’s moon hung just over the horizon beyond him. In a few hundred years, it would collide with the planet. Because it was so close to the horizon, about to set for the day, the optical illusion made the moon appear larger in the sky than it really was. Ash had been on some alien worlds before, but she’d never witnessed a “moonset”. As Thonal continued its rapid descent, this would be a first for her.

“The mask only occurs in one and three thousand,” Shepard said absently as the space cow pawed at her hand, looking for more treats. “It’s not a sign of a bandit. They’re harmless.”

It grabbed her thumb like an impatient child and bent it back to open her hand, gave her palm a snorting sniff then touched its wide tongue to the same spot. “Sorry. That’s all I’ve got, pal.” She extracted her hands from its searching paws before it began to snatch at the latches of her armor.

“Do I want to know how you know that, Commander?” Alenko asked. He crawled on his belly up next to Ashley and put binoculars up to his eyes, looking out over the canyon. Ash took the hint and put her sniper rifle scope up to her eye. The first thing she saw was the body of dead security guard lying at the bunker’s door. She gave a grunt of surprise. They were probably too late to save the scientist. She’d been hoping that maybe they weren’t too late to do some good. Disappointed, she let out a puff of breath.

“Well, I did come from a farming colony. They’re tough to wrangle, but once they’re down—”

“Wait. Wait. You were… you’re a space cowgirl?” Alenko sputtered, he sat up a bit from his prone position and gaped at the commander. A grin teased the corners of Ash’s mouth at the LT’s dumb-struck response as she watched a man in heavy armor but no helmet light a cigarette with his omni-tool. Alenko’s reaction had pretty much been hers too when Shepard had told her that tidbit of information when they’d laughed together over drinks at the Citadel. Before Ashley had managed to wake up naked in a hotel with Joker next to her with very little memory of the night before.

That thought brought on a frown. She didn’t want to think about the stupid jerk or the stupid things they did in their stupid, drunken stupor on stupid Armistice Day. Stupidly.

Or that said stupid jerk had stupidly thought she was a stupid asari.

Ash continued to watch the heavily armored man across the ravine as he blew out smoke from his nose then took another puff.

_An asari? Really?_

_Stupid, idiotic, moronic asshole._

She wasn’t going to think about it. _Forget it._ It was over. It was done. And the asshole was just stupid. And she wasn’t going to cry about it. It didn’t _hurt_. She was just pissed. Yeah. She was just pissed and hurt and, and pissed that she’d been too drunk to realize— _Fuck_.

_An asari?_

_Really?_

“I’m Commander Shepard.” Shepard’s voice was imperious, almost as if she were insulted to be called anything else. Her next sentence confirmed it. “’Space cowgirl’ is just… well, it’s just _wrong_. I’m a _Marine_. I’m not… I haven’t— _oomph_.” Ash looked back just in time as the space cow nudged Shepard, nearly knocking her over. The Commander thumped it on the nose, and the weird-looking cow took the hint, giving a bleating warble before walking away towards the rest of the herd. “Ah. Damn it. Give that back.”

Shepard tried to keep pace with the space cow which had begun to trot. It had something in its paw. _Is that Shepard’s credit chit?_ Ash blinked. Well, maybe Garrus was on to something after all.  She imagined the herd holding a town hall meeting with the shifty-looking one holding a gavel and calling the meeting to order.

Still, they needed a shuttle if they were going to go for galactic domination.

Before Ashley’s eyes, Shifty broke out into a dead run, its four muscular legs allowing it to quickly distance itself from its pursuer. Its reddish speckled fur rippled as it darted. Shepard ran after it dropping all semblance of dignity and yelled, and her crew dropped all semblances of dutiful soldiers and laughed. “Get back here. That’s not edible!”  T’Soni followed at a distance, telling Shepard she should have listened to the turian.

“Told you it was shifty,” Garrus muttered as Shepard and the space cow disappeared over a ridge and Ashley, still chuckling at her commanding officer and the idea the shifty-looking cows of the galaxy were going to use Shepard’s creds to fund their takeover, put her eye back to the scope. “Williams, you see what I see?”

“Only if you’re seeing the two dead bodies and five not-dead bodies across the canyon,” Ash responded, watching the five heavily-armed guards as they patrolled the bunker’s parameter. Two were smoking cigarettes now. One, a woman with what looked like a white handprint painted across her charcoal-gray helmet, walked with a limp. She appeared to sneer at one of the others, another woman also with the same headdress paint across the charcoal-gray helmet, as she passed her.

“ _Eight_ not-dead bodies,” Garrus corrected. “There are three on the other side of that shuttle. Mercs by the look of it. Not sure of the company though. I’ve never seen the logo.”

Ash looked again, spotting the three mercs easily now that she knew where to look. One of them was taking a leak—he was armored, but it wasn’t a hardsuit. The white handprint was across his padded shoulder. His shoulder-length hair was dark and matted to his head by liquid, probably sweat. It was hard to tell at this distance. If it was some kind of hair product—Ash shuddered. _Gross_. The other two appeared to just be standing around gabbing and smoking. Then one took a bite of what appeared to be a sandwich.

“Leave it to a mercenary group to have bathroom and lunch breaks while a serial killer does his murdering thing inside.” She shook her head while the LT choked back a laugh.

“Easy pickins,” he commented.

Ash heard Garrus shift, his armor rubbing on the blue-green moss that covered the granite of the precipice making the moss crackle. It sounded like someone stepping on dead leaves. “The dead bodies are wearing what looks like the same make and model of armor. I can make out the ExoGeni Corp logo on the one by the door. Company’s private security, maybe.”

Ash lifted a shoulder. “Armor’s different than the Zhu’s Hope colony security.”

“Heyuan Genomics supposedly shares the bunker,” Alenko said. “They may have supplied some of the security. Either way, I doubt they stood a chance against the mercs. Professional hit squad, maybe?”

Garrus’s voice was quiet. “That’d be my guess. Whatever’s going down with this Dr. Wayne is going down now. We’ll never get over there in time to save him, question him.”

“The eezo trail from the relay was still fresh when we arrived,” Alenko reminded them. “Whoever this is, he’s a sadist. The other two doctors were tortured. That last one...” He made a gagging noise.

“Yeah.” Ash remembered the digitals Hackett had sent along with the coordinates and suppressed a shudder. “The first one was a clean kill. The killer got more aggressive as he went along.”

“Angrier,” Garrus asserted.

“You see that sort of thing a lot during your work with C-Sec?” Ash wanted to know.

“Some. The psychopaths on some of the cases I handled couldn’t find the peace they were looking for or the thrill of killing took them further over the edge as they gained confidence in what they were doing. A few of them had been torturing and killing things since childhood. Real sick bastards.”

There was a thunderous, alien roar off in the distance. It was deep and throaty and ended with three whining, bird-like calls. The alien sound gave everyone pause.

“Where’s the Commander and Liara?” Alenko asked, lowering his binoculars and looking around. The Mako sat some distance away from the edge of the cliff to keep the vehicle from sight of the bunker — it was a good walk to it, about a hundred meters, but the Commander and T’Soni were nowhere in sight. Neither was the ambling herd of space cows. There was another roar with same three bird-like calls.

“ _Shit_!” Shepard’s panicked voice bit out. Ash tensed, senses on alert. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Liara!”

Liara sounded frantic. “I see it!” She was panting. Were they running? What was it?

The three crawled back from the edge of the cliff and stood as one, each calling out to the Commander and T’Soni in their own way. Shepard’s helmet appeared over the rise she and T’Soni had last been seen on. T’Soni’s appeared soon afterward. They _were_ running—sprinting, more like. Ashley thought she heard a dull roar, not like the alien roar from before. Different. It sounded like the rush of water. Ashley looked around. They were on flat, open land. It was _alien_ land, mind, but gravity still appeared to work the way it was supposed it. Water wasn’t falling up. At least she hoped to God not. She didn’t want to imagine what kind of alien creatures lived in the water here. Too many teeth and not enough elbows.

“Get inside the vehicle, people!” Shepard ordered. She gestured with her hand. “Move!” The rush-of-water roaring grew louder as Shepard and Liara sprinted towards _Precious_. It began to sound like those rotary bladed vehicles from the very old army vids Granddad used to watch— helicopters? Then the animal-like roar echoed once again. “Shit! Run! _Run_!”

Ashley swallowed and broke into a run, quickly forgetting about army vids and helicopters, collapsing her weapon as she did so, attached it to its slot on the back of her armor. She focused on moving her legs as she began a hundred meter sprint.

“I can see it now,” Shepard said.

“What’s that Commander?” Alenko asked. He was faster than Ashley, his longer legs propelled him further. Ashley wanted to know what Shepard could see too, but at the same time dreaded what was chasing them. Commander Shepard didn’t scare easily.

Shepard panted. “The headlines when this gets out.”

“First Human Spectre Trampled by Space Cows?” Liara asked.

 _What?_ Ashley picked up speed. A _stampede_? Here? Seriously?

“Story of my life,” the commander said depreciatively. “Liara, how many do you think we can pick off before they overrun us?”

“Not enough!” Liara shouted. She, too, sounded winded.

“Joker!”

“You want me to take out space cows?” Joker asked. He sounded surprised.

They were nearing the Mako. Ashley looked over her shoulder as she ran. Shepard was steadily closing the gap. Unfortunately, a sea of red and pounding hooves closed the gap to Shepard. “Not necessary. Just be ready to pull our asses out of the fire. Things are about to get ugly. Keep monitoring transmissions on that base.”

Alenko and Garrus made it to the Mako and opened the hatch. “Close the door!” Shepard ordered, now keeping pace with Ash. Twenty meters left. The Commander reached back and grabbed T’Soni by the wrist, pulling her along. “Williams, round the other side. Move it, T’Soni! Move! Move! Move!”

The herd was almost upon them. The sound of hundreds of hooves roared in Ashley’s ears. She hurdled a rock that jutted out of the ground. Then the animal-like roar echoed, closer.

Much closer.

_Oh. God._

She didn’t dare look back.

They rounded _Precious_ just the first of the herd slammed into the vehicle. Shepard let out a surprised curse as she swung the door open then was forced to duck away from flying space cow hooves when the Mako wasn’t enough to stop the herd from bounding over it like alien kangaroos. Liara pushed her and the three jumped in, slammed the door behind them.

“They’re not stopping,” Ash said in wonder.

Shepard shook her head. If they didn’t get out soon, the creatures could damage the vehicle. Blood already streaked the window on Alenko’s side as creature after creature rammed the rover. “I’m more worried about what startled them,” she said.

“Big?” Alenko asked, his fingers flying over the haptic adaptive interface.

“Huge,” Shepard confirmed. “Big enough to swallow the herd and us. Inside _Precious_.”

“Shi- _it_.” Pressly’s voice over the comm sounded. “Commander, we’re in position to pick you up.”

“Negative. Hold in orbit, Pressly.” She let loose a volley of automatic weapons fire, and the herd changed direction enough for the Mako to move. Shepard threw it in reverse, managed a full donut, but they otherwise stayed in about the same place. The herd didn’t relent. They were everywhere.

Ash saw the thing that was chasing them. Her blood turned to ice.

_Mother of God._

Like a gigantic open-mouthed shark on two powerful legs. It wasn’t running, merely walking after its meal, sweeping up the tail end of its intended prey—the space cow herd. And closing fast. It must have been the size of the _Normandy’s_ cargo bay. There were at least six rows of ridged, triangular teeth that lined all the way around the beast’s mouth.

_Oh. My. God._

The creature raked across the ground, snatching up cows and the blue-green moss, chewing as it went, its great jaws gnashing, its lips peeling back to reveal how large the teeth really were. The one visible all-black eye at the very top of its head shut as it chewed with the ferocity Ash had only seen of earth’s Great White sharks. The teeth gleamed white against the fleshy color of its triangular-shaped head and backdrop of the black clouds and electrical storm on the far horizon. Even the geth on Eden Prime hadn’t been as frightening as that thing. Ashley bit back bile. Fear bubbling up even as she remembered the Thresher Maw all those months back on Edolus. It’d been ugly and _slithered,_ and there had been acid, but there hadn’t been so many damned _teeth_.

Ashley wanted out of the vehicle. She wanted to run. How come they weren’t moving? Why weren’t they _running_?

_Oh. My. God._

“Shepard!” T’Soni cried from beside Ashley when she saw the advancing maw of triangle teeth on legs. And suddenly Ashley had a lap full of frightened asari. Ash was reminded of her sister Lynne when they’d first discovered the junjun in their home after moving to Amaterasu. Reflexively, she reached out and held Liara. Then she remembered Joker’s words and nearly pushed Liara out of the Mako.

 _An_ asari _? Really?_ It was an asinine thought in the middle of being scared out of her mind, but it was there. She shook her head to clear it. Okay, why weren’t they running?

“Commander?”

“We’re going!” Shepard assured her, but the Mako _wasn’t_ going. In fact, it was like Casbin all over again. This time instead of getting stuck in primordial muck, they were crunching and crushing space cows stuck in the axles and under the chassis. Shepard tried to bounce them to safety with no luck. The space cows, though they were thinning out, were still ramming the vehicle — a roadblock of bodies on three sides.

“Scramble orders from the bunker, Commander,” Joker reported. “They know someone’s there.”

“We’re about to die, Joker. An alien dinosaur with a mouth three times the size of a T-Rex is about to eat us. I don’t particularly care what the fuck is going on in that bunker right now.” The Commander smacked the dash with her palm. “Fuck!

“Kaidan, adjust the eezo core. Lighten our mass. Joker, if they leave the planet blow them the fuck up. Garrus, arm the canon. We are not going to be food today.”

“Tomorrow then?” Ash asked. It was stupid, but her mind was on overload. A giant land shark. A goddamn alien land _shark_. She couldn’t force herself to look back out the window at all those teeth. It would haunt her nightmares for days, weeks to come. _Oh. My. God._

Shepard ignored her. “Why the _fuck_ didn’t someone tell me this planet was in its fucking mega fauna stage? We’re preserving _that thing_? Why?” she wanted to know. “Why would anyone want to do that? What’s wrong with people?”

“Eezo core adjusted, Shepard,” Alenko said, tone light but clipped. “We’re as light as we’re going to get.”

Shepard fired the thrusters. The maw of teeth was almost upon them. They shot straight up in the air just as the beast bore down upon the Mako. “Increase mass all the way!”

 _Precious_ plummeted and the ground reached up to grab them. Ashley’s gut went to her mouth, instant nausea. The rover landed with a thud on the top of the monstrous creature’s huge, triangular head.

“We can’t beat this one to death by jumping on it,” Garrus told them. He was anything but calm.

It took Ashley a few seconds to realize what they were now looking at was a giant black eye about the size of the Mako that sprouted out of the top of creature’s head. The eyelid rose up and moistened the eye, the second, filmy inner eyelid caught and didn’t retract all the way. Ash felt she was looking at a liquid black hole.

“Blind it,” Shepard ordered. Garrus fired the port-side automatics. The moist eye popped like a blister, spurting orange liquid onto the rover. Then the alien dinosaur roared in pain, rearing back and shook its head. The Mako was tossed off like a dust particle. They tumbled ass over gun turret without a means to hold on. No one had the time or inclination to strap themselves in before Shepard had thrust them onto the creature. _Precious_ leveled out, the five occupants landing in a heap of arms and legs at the back of the rover, pushed back by the initial g-forces of the fall.

Ash looked out and only saw the valley’s basin four kilometers down and rising fast. She joined Liara in screaming as they plummeted.

 


	65. Currents in Chaos

Killing her was the easiest thing he had ever done. It happened so fast, how could anyone blame him… but himself?

As Han Olar and Dr. Zoneua prepared to go to lunch for the day, killing was indeed on Han Olar’s mind. It disgusted him.

But he wasn’t thinking of killing _her_.

Two laboratory technicians sat manning the telescoping arms of an advanced automated articulating surgical system vivisecting one of the creatures within the containment zone. The creature, the rachni—such an amazing discovery—let out a shriek that had Han Olar adjusting the audio sensors of his envirosuit. His eyes wanted to cross for the pain it gave him. His mind rang—a tingling at the base of his skull. _Could it be—?_ The technicians hadn’t bothered with anesthetics. The humans thought them only to be animals. The research never sat well with him. From all reports of the Rachni War era, the rachni were an intelligent species. And yet, science prevailed. The research took place on Noveria for a reason.

And Binary Helix paid very well.

The other rachni in another portion of the containment area beat against the shielding apparatus. Little good it will do them, Han Olar thought. The apparatus would to hold up to weapons’ fire. The only thing that could breach it was a neutron detonation.

And possibly biotics. But the rachni so far hadn’t shown any inclination towards biotics.  There were still rumblings of debate among the science team about exposing a small variable group to element zero. To test the biotic capabilities of the species. And possible brain cancer therapies designed for other species should the rachni fall to the tumors associated with refined eezo exposure.

The rachni’s hard shell cracked open under the AutoArt’s mechanical arms, interstitial fluid leaking, pouring down the gully of the examination table. Disgusting. It twitched, the monitors squawking as the alien squirmed for the technicians, ripping two of its arms off to try to escape. Olar watched a moment more, adding another note to his company-issue omni-tool— _self-preservation instinct high, shows willingness to lose limbs to escape_ —then turned and left with Dr. Zoneua.

They always took their lunch together. Who knew why? He couldn’t stand the Earth-clan woman. She was noisy and nosy and liked the experiment far too much for her own good. Nothing good would ever come out of this experiment. Yeah. A thousand-year old derelict and this is what they were doing with it? The rachni died because they wanted to eat everything in the galaxy. They were supposed to be dead. Binary Helix should have left well enough alone.

Behind them, the rachni shrieked again. The shrieking stopped abruptly as Dr. Zoneua tapped the elevator controls. Han Olar took a moment to adjust his audio again.

Dr. Zoneua bared her teeth in a smile. “They’re so _interesting_ ,” she said, eyes alight. “Don’t you think so, Olar?”

Han Olar only nodded thinking it might be best to turn the audio down again. What could it hurt? “Interesting,” he agreed as he tapped his foot. Why hadn’t Dr. Thoennes let the lift down yet? Damn him. Always two minutes late. If he wasn’t so bloody brilliant, Binary Helix would have terminated his contract years ago, Han Olar thought.

“Olar.” She rolled her eyes towards her heavens in a way that made him want to kick the earth-clan’s shins and knock her off her long legs. “You never agree with me. There must be something wrong with you.”

“Yeah. Very wrong. My envirosuit is too tight around my gonads. It’s causing all sorts of discomfort. A ‘suit should allow a man to breathe and move how he likes.”

He was always crude with her. It never fazed her either. He was beginning to wonder if her translator malfunctioned regularly or if she just wanted him to talk dirty to her. The former he could handle; the latter made him want to vomit. He set the idea forcibly aside. He did not even _like_ Dr. Zoneua. She was, as the earth-clan said, a pain in the arse.

The elevator’s chime rang just as the sound of shattering glass cut across the Hot Labs. Someone—human, Han Olar thought—screamed; volus weren’t capable of making such a high-pitched racket. As Han Olar turned to see what the commotion was, he gasped, his heart lurching in fear.

Surrounded by the flashing lights of the containment breach alarm, six rachni soldiers stormed through the broken containment field with many more behind them. The two technicians operating the AutoArt were dead, sliced to ribbons by the soldiers. Han Olar hadn’t heard them die. He only heard his quickening gasps for air inside his envirosuit.

The rachni trampled the bloody remains and scurried towards them. Han Olar took three steps backwards as the elevator door opened. Shouldn’t he hear more than his own breathing? Shouldn’t there be scuttling noises or the like? Shouldn’t he hear the rachni shrieking? Shouldn’t he hear the Hot Labs’ alarms?

“NO! Oh, no!” She stood frozen, expression awash in terror. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”

He heard Dr. Zoneua, her fear. But he couldn’t hear the rachni. Shouldn’t he hear the rachni? They were right there. He backed up further as the rachni loomed closer, pinchers thrusting. Shouldn’t he hear the alarms? The lights were flashing. When Han Olar reached the back of the car, he calmly reached out and depressed the elevator door button. The door slid shut; Olar couldn’t hear the sound of hydraulics, just his desperate gasps for air. Shouldn’t he hear more? What was wrong with his audio?

Dr. Zoneua pressed her face against the glass and beat it with the palm of her hand. She might have yelled something, but he couldn’t hear her. Breathing too hard. Yeah. Spots began to swim in front of his vision.

A rachni pincher sliced through the back of her skull and opened like a flower, a macabre blossom of red gore and gray matter. Like a melon, he thought. Red blood sprayed the glass as the flower-like pincher tapped the elevator door.

Laboring for breath, Olar calmly reached out and depressed the tram station button. The elevator car began its ascent away from the horror, the blood. The gore. Dr. Zoneua’s bloody remains. He stared at the streaks on the glass as the blood ran down. Gravity.

The spots overpowered his vision, and he dropped, out of breath, to the floor of the elevator. When he awoke an hour later, he lay in another part of Peak 15 and told he was the only one that had made it out of the Hot Labs, and many of the scientists had died in the first wave.

_I closed the door._ It was the easiest thing he had ever done.

Yeah. Easiest.

“She’s dead,” he told Captain Ventralis when the Captain had asked what happened. “And I’m not.”

_I killed her._

_Yeah._

* * *

“Shit!”

Kaidan pulled his head out from under Garrus’s ass as the Mako hurdled towards the green valley below. They were falling at incredible speed -- and gaining speed as they went. He had to lighten the rover, slow them down. Get thrusters under them. Like a regular planet drop. Right now they were in free fall, and Zero Gee wasn’t agreeing with him. He pushed off and crawled forward, his body floating. He knew his blood cells were no longer the flattened shape now but were rounded globules. That idea didn’t agree with him either. Kaidan forced back a shudder as he pushed aside floating debris.

The Commander crawled along the seats toward the controls. “ _Precious_ , emergency eezo core override. Reduce mass: maximum percent.”

_Precious's_ computer-generated voice was pleasant as they were all about to die. “Unable to comply. Manual key sequence required, Commander Shepard.”

“What?” A failsafe. _Shit._

“Negative,” Shepard said. “Eezo core override. Emergency Authorization: Shepard. Foxtrot Yankee. Reduce mass: maximum percent. I say again, Shepard. Foxtrox Yankee. Reduce mass: maximum percent.”

“Emergency Authorization accepted. Eezo core override in progress. Mass reduction at ten percent.”

* * *

_Fuck_.

“Anyone hurls, I’ll throw your ass out of the tank,” Shepard warned coldly as she made it to her seat and strapped in. Free fall was really a no-brainer as they spun around to their doom. Free fall she could handle.

A dinosaur, though? Tossing them into free fall?  Really?

_Did that_ really _just happen?_

_What the fuck?_

Dinosaurs were low on her list of things she knew what to do with. However, they did make her list of Do Not Want. Right next to Thresher Maws, vomiting in helmets, and changing shitty drawers.

Because fuck that.

“Aren’t we already hurling?” Liara asked. “Downwards?” Her voice was shaky and thin. She snapped her safety harness into place, her face pale.

“Vomit, Liara. Vomit,” Garrus made it to his seat after getting Williams’ knee in his face and strapped in. His visor tumbled around the cockpit. “Make a note: Shepard — and I, also— will throw anyone out of the tank on your ass if you vomit. And let’s just be clear with the definition: to throw. A verb. Imagine that. The meaning? To cast, fling or heave to the ground. Right on your ass.

“Anyone vomits, you’ll have a real short lesson in learning to fly. Free fall and body fluids do not mix.”

“Oil and water,” Alenko agreed. He nabbed Garrus’s visor and handed it to the sulking turian.

“Wait.” Liara sounded confused. “What do oil and water have to do with body fluids and free fall?”

“Everything,” Williams, Shepard, Alenko and Garrus said emphatically at the same time.

Even with the banter typical of her team in a heart-pounding predicament which required a strategic retreat (even if said strategic retreat had been the equivalent of screaming like toddlers on a sugar rush), Shepard was still baffled by what had just happened. Not so much scared shitless as she had been while running from the stampede of space cows and the gargantuan beast that feasted on them. Nor still pissed off that a damn space cow had stolen her credit chit…

…Okay, maybe she was still pissed that a damn space cow had stolen her credit chit. After all, you never knew if the damn things were going use it to take over the galaxy. Who knew what was intelligent out here. There were intelligent machines and turians. Why the hell not intelligent space cows? Especially since the thieving cow had grabbed her chit from a secured— _Swear to God_ —pocket on her armor.

But what the hell? They’d gotten thrown over a cliff by a fucking _dinosaur_. After landing the Mako on its goddamned head. She’d seen some shit while on ops. She’d been in some shit on ops. Thresher Maws were right up there with the shit, but never had she ever had to go up against anything that huge.

And she wasn’t going to do it again.

_Ever._

_Nope, nope. Nope._

_Precious_ continued its pleasant-voiced countdown. “Mass reduction at twenty percent.”

Shepard watched as Alenko and Williams strapped themselves in. “Isn’t this some shit?” she asked them, still in disbelief. She couldn’t quite keep her voice from sounding utterly bewildered. They tumbled head over ass toward a raging river a few kilometers down, and she struggled to figure out how the hell they’d managed to survive this long.

Fucking-A.

Alenko’s grin was contagious. “Flying shit. Ma’am.”

“Super flying shit, ma’am,” Williams agreed. She grinned as well.

All three humans were currently high on their adrenaline rush. Or, possibly, they were all dead and this was that weird dream state just before the brain clicked off and she crapped herself for the final time, Shepard thought. That, at least, would explain how she managed to get mugged by a damn cow.

Well, no. Her drawers were still clean. _Still living._

_Damn it._

And surely to God her dying subconscious would come up with something better than _that_ when her ticket got punched.

“We should charge admission,” Garrus said. His voice was calm, reaffirming Shepard’s previous though: Free fall was a no-brainer. “’Commander Shepard’s _Normandy_ Safari Tours. Rides daily.’”

“‘Explore uncharted worlds,’” Alenko said.

Liara chimed in. “‘Learn how to dodge shifty-looking cows.’”

Shepard glared at Liara, who only grinned cheekily at her, anger rising again at the goddamned space cow. She knew how to handle a cow, damn it. It was the dinosaur that had stopped her.

Yeah.

She watched the ground get closer, judged the distance. She hit the manual override on the eezo core to increase the mass at the rear of the tank. She couldn’t deploy the thrusters if the Mako’s ass hung in the air. They could fly into the cliff and crush the top of the tank. Or something like that. Didn’t sound like a pleasant way to go. And besides, they needed the canon for next part of the mission. _Goddamned dinosaur._

“Shields at ninety percent,” _Precious_ announced unexpectedly.

“What’s happening?” Liara asked, gripping the back of Shepard’s seat.

“The mercs at the base are shooting at us,” Shepard said as she studied the readouts. “Heavy-duty fire power to punch through these shields.” _Easy pickins, my ass._

It took several minutes to get _Precious_ under control, several more to slow the tank enough and keep them from splattering on the ravine floor — they missed landing in the river by half a meter. When the tank finally slammed into the ground with the teeth-jarring thud of a normal planet drop, Shepard took a look around at her crew.

“That was _not_ on my bucket list,” she announced once she’d gotten her breath back. _Although_ … She thought maybe, just _maybe_ on the next mission she’d vault off a cliff to experience the general reaction of everyone. Keep the crew on their toes and what not. _Because_.

Everyone looked fine, if a little shaky. Despite the stampede, the goddamn dinosaur, and the fall, they’d landed right-side up and not squished, splattered or otherwise hurt. A definite plus. The shields shimmered again as _Precious_ took another direct hit from a sniper round. _Well, that’s irritating_. “Garrus, can we do something about that sniper?”

“Not from this distance or angle.”

“Of course not.” She spun the Mako around and aimed for the ninety-degree cliff. Then noticed a problem on one of the diagnostic screens in front of her. “And here we are with low tire pressure in the front right wheel.”

“Poor us,” Alenko said, deadpan as Shepard forced the Mako to crawl up the cliff.

* * *

Ash watched as the final mercenary erupted into a fireball from the incendiary ammo of _Precious’_ 150 mm canon.

“That was kind of anticlimactic, Skipper,” she complained as Shepard opened the door and jumped out of the Mako.

“You know, I think that’s all the climaxes I can take for one mission, thank you very much,” Liara said as she got out, earning her a look from everyone else. She blinked at them, completely perplexed by their expressions. “What?”

She felt grateful they could quickly move in on the base, but still. Ash wanted—needed—to impress upon the bad guys her ability to use her boom stick. Using the canon sucked most of the fun out of it.

Shepard hooked a thumb at the other side of the ravine. “Tell that to the other guy, Williams.”

Across the ravine the “other guy” in question —the dinosaur that had tried to eat them— was currently being chewed by two more of the same type triangular-headed teeth-o-saurs. A river of blood flowed over the side of the cliff in an orange waterfall. The two creatures looked somewhat smaller than the carcass they were gnawing on.

 “Damn,” Alenko said. “They didn’t waste any time.”

Shepard shrugged. “Nope. Nature’s Law. Circle of life and all that.”

Ashley shuddered and looked away when the monsters began to fight over the leftovers. She couldn’t wait to get inside the building and start laying down Ash’s Law.

“Kind of like reporters, if you think about it.” Garrus turned one of the ExoGeni security guards over, studied him and opened his omni-tool to update his mission notes.

Shepard only grinned with a shake of her head. “Carnivores.” Her pale face was sunburned, highlighting freckles across her upturned nose. “What I want to know is why preserve the megafauna if same usually die out anyway? Why? Why do that?” She sounded truly aggrieved as she leaned in and looked at the bunker’s door. The locking mechanism was green — unlocked. Security was disabled so they couldn’t see anything inside. It was hard to tell if it was an inside job, but from the bodies of security that were strewn about, Ash doubted it.

“Let’s see what we have behind Door Number One.” The door opened when Shepard activated it.

On alert, the team entered the bunker single file with Garrus closing the airlock door behind them. The coolness of the bunker nearly made Ash weep for joy. Damn, it felt good against her face. She knew her nose had to be sunburned just as Shepard’s face was. Or was it moon-burned? The skin felt raw and stretched across her face. Though freckles looked good on Shepard, Ash felt glad she didn’t freckle. She’d look like something out of horror vid.

The bunker was a standard ExoGeni underground model. Like all ExoGeni models, it had an airlock even on a world with enough O2 in atmo to keep humans alive. The bunkers were guaranteed to stand up to most hazardous environments—or your credits back. And, Ashley realized, the catalog team more than likely chose the underground version because of the megafauna tromping around topside. She suppressed a shudder, remembering the _teeth—_ and, here, she thought she hated all slithering, elbow-less things—as she lined up against the next door opposite Alenko and T’Soni—low since Shepard liked going in high—rifle at ready and waited for the airlock to cycle and pressurize.

The short hall that slanted down to the next compartment was vacant except the body of a scientist in white lab coat dyed crimson and a pool of congealed blood underneath her. The scientist’s young face held the shocked expression of the dead. Her eyes, once deep-set and brown, were glazed over in death. Shield-less, the scientist didn’t stand a chance against the two slugs that killed her—there were two holes in her chest the size of Ashley’s fist. Blood and meat splattered the closed door.

Shepard stopped briefly to close the woman’s eyes and take her fingerprints. “Darlene Hollenberg, age 24. Laboratory technician, third grade. Heyuan Genomics Ontarom Catalog Team, Human Systems Alliance. Logged into ExoGeni Corp’s bunker at oh six hundred, local time. Must have just cycled through the airlock before the hit squad came in.” She shook her head. “Just got in the way, didn’t you, Darlene?”

“Damn shame,” Garrus said as they pushed on and stepped over the body. “Always hated working Homicide.”

The next room was clear except for bodies of a few security guards and four other scientists. Same MO— two slugs to each chest. The security guards fared better— if that’s saying anything. The first slug took out the shields; the second took out the guards. Ashley figured the hit squad had swarmed in and overwhelmed the security team in a blitz attack.

“You work Homicide for very long, Garrus?” Shepard checked the bodies, taking fingerprints and notes for her report to the Council and Admiral Hackett.

“Five years was long enough. You learn in a very short amount of time what horrific things people can do to each other for reasons they think are justified. And you learn in a very short amount of time that paperwork and red tape will stop a case cold before you can bring the murderer to justice.”

“Like Dr. Saleon?” Shepard asked. Ash had no idea who they spoke of but apparently Garrus did because he all but shouted “Exactly!”

Ash made her own notes on her Nexus as did the others. She tried unsuccessfully to block the images from her mind as she made quick notations. IDs, how the room looked, how they appeared to have died – the Nexus even had a scanner that told her time of death. It didn’t stop her from remembering the dead colonists on Eden Prime or Feros, and she had to shake her head to clear her mind. This was _not_ Eden Prime. Nor was it Feros. Just another mission report. Just a bunch of dead bodies.

Like it was that easy, she thought derisively. After this mission, she’d need a drink. Or three.

And, no, she wasn’t inviting Sir Ignoramus Moreau either. _Ugh_. How could she have been so stupid to think—

_God._

_An asari?_

_Really?_

_What was she, chopped liver?_

“You were a homicide cop when you worked the Saleon case, right?” Shepard closed the eyes of an aged ExoGeni Corp xenobiologist.

“No, Narcotics Division actually,” Garrus said. “I’d just transferred in as a lieutenant when the case landed in my lap. That guy’s liver I was telling you about? The one we thought _missing_? Pumped full of Red Sand, Easy, Hypnotic, Blast Off, and a new drug with the street name of Whore. Well, it was new _then_ …”

The LT shook his head. “Jeeze. Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?”

Garrus just shrugged and Ashley’s eyes bugged out when Garrus told them. “Considering Dr. Saleon was growing extra organs inside the man’s body and then removing them for black market sales, it was probably to combat the pain. Not sure why he took Whore –it turned out to be a date-rape drug. That was about a six months before medi-gel was safe for turian use. Dr. Saleon had just stitched him up with dermal adhesive. He was leaking _everywhere,_ inside and out. It was just our luck he bled out in Interview.”

Ashley winced. “Oh, my God” was all she could think to say.

“Damn,” Alenko said before his HUD flashed at him. “Commander, enemy signatures, next compartment.” Ash was thankful they were back into the mission and not Garrus’ creepy case. Growing extra livers? Inside someone? _Eeuw_. She _knew_ the calm of the Citadel was wrong. _Peaceful, my ass._ She imagined the next thing Garrus would probably tell them was they dragged dead bodies out of the lake all the time.

“This door’s good. The next one looks to be rigged.”

“Explosives?” Shepard, on full alert, jogged over to him from the body of a female security guard.

Alenko shook his head. “Negative. EMCs. It’ll still pack a punch, but shouldn’t blow us up.” He waited a beat. “Hopefully.”

“Suggestions?”

“Use another EMC to take them out. ‘Bout all we can do. The backlash will still knock out the shields of whoever throws the EMC from our side. For a minute or two.”

Shepard nodded and held out her hand. “Give me one of yours. I’ll do it.”

“Commander.” He started to argue, but the look she leveled him had him reaching for the cartridge.

“I still have my barrier,” she told him. “And it’s stronger than yours.”

He nodded, handing over the EMC. “Good luck, ma’am.”


	66. And Hell Followed With Him

Shepard had an excellent throwing arm. Kaidan thought the Commander probably missed her calling as a baseball player.

He felt damn glad she’d missed that particular calling.

The EMC trap detonated in a dazzling show of light and sparks. Electrical pulses arced in greens and blues, radiating in a shock wave down the corridor, past the door, and half-way into the compartment as excited electrons, protons, and particles surged and bounced. Oxygen particles collided into ozone. The scent of it hit Kaidan strong and hard.

“Barriers and EMCs down,” Kaidan reported as he ran up to take cover by the door again. He forced his mind on the mission, away from the worry. The compartment’s barriers and the EMCs weren’t the only thing down. Shepard’s shields had failed under the electromagnetic assault. She let them know as she took cover beside him, a frown on her face.  He couldn’t read her expression.  She had her Game Face on.  Her barrier shimmered, but only just. He dropped down low while she took the high route, a quick glance at his HUD showed enemy hard-suit locations in red and how long until Shepard had to wait until her shields recharged to one hundred percent.

Too damn long.

This close to the deck the smell of death, the metallic stench of blood, the evacuated bowels and bladders nearly overpowered him. It mingled with the ozone and mass accelerator vapor. As bad as the slavers’ pit he and his squad took down months before he’d transferred to the _Normandy_.

It pissed him off. The brutality of it, of what had been done to simple scientists. They were just here cataloging critically endangered animals and plant life, for God’s sake. The injustice of it all. What was the point?

It disappointed him, too. All for what?

A mercenary group took out a bunker of scientists just so one guy could torture and kill another? Why would anyone go to that much trouble?

He looked up at Shepard where she stood poised, a lioness ready for her prey. She all but bounced lightly on her toes, pistol at ready. He edged closer, read the sigs on his HUD. The mercs were about to enter the kill zone. Shepard’s shields were recharging. Slowly, but they were coming around again. Her barrier held. It shimmered, undulating — a technique he often wondered if she had managed to do on her own or if it had been part of her training.

Her briefing before the drop onto the planet surface had been short: The scientists being killed had been on a top-secret project on Akuze. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about her. Worried about her, her frame of mind. She said she was over Akuze and had been placed on admin duty on Luna to overcome it… but, he wondered, how did someone get over something like that? How did you face each day knowing your buddies were gone and that your decisions were responsible for the fact that they were never coming home? Marines died in the line of duty. He knew one day his luck would run out. It was a fact of the service. But if something happened to one of the team—all of the team—he wondered how he would react, how he would overcome it. Especially if it was his decision to send them to their deaths.

And he wondered, if something happened to her, would he be able to overcome it just by talking to a shrink and some light duty? Would it really be that simple?

He doubted it. Shepard’s aloof demeanor during this entire mission told him the scars from Akuze were still there, regardless of what she said.

He mentally shook himself. He wasn’t going to think about that. They weren’t going to lose Commander Shepard. They couldn’t. And if he wanted to be brutally honest with himself: He couldn’t. But never mind that. He _wasn’t_ going to be brutally honest with himself. They simply weren’t going to lose her. He was going to do everything he could to keep her alive and functioning. As far as he was concerned, that was the number one priority of this op: Commander Shepard Stays Alive. And, yeah, she wasn’t going to nearly bleed to death this time. He’d take the hit if he had to. Shepard was important. She was… well, she was special, wasn’t she? Special to him, to her crew. To every-damn-thing. When had it happened, he found himself wondering. When had she become the immovable center? _His_ immovable center? _Shit_.

_Commander Shepard stays alive, damn it._

Yeah. He’d take the hit if it came down to it. Besides, no way was Shepard getting ahead of him on the scar tissue.

_Calleigh Shepard stays alive._

He watched the HUD and watched the merc squad enter the kill zone. They stormed down the short corridor. Shepard fired her pistol, foregoing her shotgun — the spray of slugs would be too wide to really do much damage to their shields, Kaidan thought. The shots echoed off the corridor walls, made his ears ring. He ignored the sound, focused on taking them down. He fired off a volley with his rifle and wasn’t surprised when the slugs did very little to penetrate the mercs’ shields. They were tough, well-trained, coordinated— definitely a hit squad, though he’d never see the logo of the merc group. The EMC blast had done little to the mercs’ shields; Shepard’s pistol was gradually whittling the shields, but it was whittling fast enough. He had been hopeful the EMC would do more, but it wasn’t unexpected. He tossed the nearest container at them using his biotics, was pleased when it knocked four of them on their asses.

“Biotics!”

Liara let them have it with a perfectly timed singularity. A woman in heavy armor flew through the air, shields disabled. The woman only grunted. Well-trained. Professional. Garrus took her out in one shot with his pistol. The singularity tossed her limp body like a rag doll. She bounced a few times—armor clacking, blood splaying against the deck—before coming to a rest a few meters behind them. Kaidan heard the single shot of Williams’ shotgun — just to be sure the woman wasn’t ever going to get up again.

At the same time, Shepard threw a lightly armored merc into the thick glass of the corridor’s walls. Cracks spider-webbed across the glass from the intensity of the throw. A red light flashed, an alarm sounded. The bunker’s VI cautioned an atmo pressure leak.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

Kaidan watched the team move on his HUD, in sync, in a formation he’d never seen before. Shepard cursed from beside him as her faceplate came down, pressurized her hard-suit just as each of the team did without being told to go to full SCABA. The door ahead closed, sealing them off from the rest of the bunker.

“Special Forces training,” she said voice clear on Kaidan’s comm. She looked at him then, odd-colored eyes clear behind her helmet’s visor. “Someone trained at the Luna Depot. Maybe all of them.”

“Your formation?” Williams asked. She tipped her head to the side.

“Yeah.” Shepard cursed again. She tapped her palm on the side of her helmet, thinking. “I read five sigs. Confirm.”

Everyone nodded.

“We’re not splitting up,” she said. “They’ll be trained to pick us off, lure us into designated quadrants. Garrus, Liara, see if you can’t tap into security. Give us an idea of the layout. They’ve got it jammed, but see what you can do.”

Garrus brought up the bunker’s VI on his omni-tool while Kaidan and Williams inspected the dead mercs in the corridor. Kaidan gave a low whistle at the armor and weapons.

“Kassa Fabrication weapons,” Williams said. She picked up a rifle, sited down on the barrel. “Armax Arsenal Predator armors.” She toed a merc with her boot.

“And Serris Council omni-tools,” he said removing an omni-tool from one of the dead. “Jeeze. All for one scientist?” He looked over at Shepard again, met her golden-green eyes with his brown ones. He voiced a thought that had been nagging him. “Commander, you think Cerberus might be trying to shut them up? Make it look like a serial killer’s after them? Otherwise… why go to all this trouble?”

Her eyes went hard, flat with suspicion. Kaidan could almost see her thoughts. It made no sense. And what the hell was Cerberus hiding?

Before she could answer, Garrus spoke. “We’re in, Shepard. It looks like they’ve regrouped. They seem to be waiting just beyond a partition on the other side of the door.  It doesn’t look like they’ve tapped into security.  They must have thought they permanently disabled it.”  If he were human, his grin would have been candy-eating. “Showed them. Right, T’Soni?”

“Well,” Shepard said, brushing off imaginary dust. “Ready to walk into a trap?” She checked her weapon.

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Commander,” Liara said.

“Yeah. Well,” Shepard said, checking her Spectre-issue shotgun. “Doubt it’s the last either.”

“What’s the plan, Commander?” Williams asked.

They gathered around Garrus’s omni-tool as Shepard laid out the plan of attack.   “Five of us, five of them.  They’re better equipped.” She pointed to the dead mercs in the corridor. “So use their weapons. Garrus, Kaidan, you’re on point.  Ash and I will guard the rear after Liara. We take them one at a time. Don’t let them flank us.”  She studied the security feed thoughtfully.

“Liara, we’ll need that singularity of yours. Don’t hesitate to hit them with it if you think they’re getting an advantage over us. How tired are you?”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Commander.” Liara took a sip of energy drink from her canteen.  “I can do this.”

Shepard studied her for a moment and Kaidan felt a twinge of jealousy coil in his gut.  He swallowed and forced himself to deal with it.  When the mission was over, when they brought Saren to justice, he and Shepard were going to part ways.  But for now, his mission priority stayed the same: Commander Shepard stays alive.

“She’s held her own so far, Commander,” he said in Liara’s defense, and Shepard’s eyes flicked to his.  There was something unreadable there for a brief second, and then it was gone.

“True enough” was all she said before giving the order to move out.

The battle was long and tiring. The mercenary squad tried to flank them, but each time they pressed, Liara released a singularity that kept them from gaining the upper hand. As a last resort, Kaidan and Garrus tapped into a decommissioned Hahne-Kedar security mech and diverted the mercs’ attentions. Shepard’s carnage mortar took out the mech and the remaining stragglers.  The southeast quadrant of the compartment had caved in and squashed at least one. _Go Team Shepard._

As the dust settled and the red sigs on their HUDs winked out, Shepard sat, back flat against a crate, legs out in front of her, and bumped the back of her head on the crate. Her chest heaved with exertion. “Remind me to requisition more Spectre gear,” she said as she brought her breathing under control. “We’re not having another mission like this.”

Cables dangled precariously. Overhead lights flickered, their lamps buzzing ominously, threatening to shut the squad in the dark.  Sparks showered from panels blown open in the blast while beams creaked and whined under stress, threatening another cave in.

“Yeah,” Garrus said drily. “I don’t think I could take another dinosaur.”

Shepard gave a snort that might have been a laugh then got to her feet. “Let’s see if the scientist still lives.” A slight limp in her gait worried Kaidan, and he discreetly ran a diagnostic.

“I’m fine, Lieutenant.”

Kaidan looked up from his omni-tool, right into her eyes. Caught. “Uh. Aye, ma’am.” He shut his omni-tool. “I… ah. I was only…”

“Understood.” She held his gaze a moment more before turning and heading toward the back of the bunker to the remaining rooms where a lone red hard-suit sig glared on their HUDs.

Her limp was more pronounced now. Kaidan swallowed, a frown forming under his breath plate. Risking censure, he reopened his omni-tool and continued the diagnostic. He sucked in a breath and bit back an oath. The rent in the commander’s armor was slowly depressurizing her suit, and the medical suite was set to dose her with a low-dose of pain killers and medi-gel in fifteen minutes. Remembering the powerful cocktail in her system on Therum and satisfied he wouldn’t have to worry about his commanding officer OD-ing on the battlefield, he left the meds alone and fiddled with her suit’s medi-gel disbursement. Fifteen minutes was too long to wait to plug that bullet hole.

“I hate synth-skin,” she complained when the suite did its job and covered the wound in her leg and oozed to block the tear in the armor.

“Better synth-skin than no skin, Commander,” he said keeping his voice cold. He marched over with a tube of omni-gel. She knew. Damn her, she knew her suit had been losing pressure and had done nothing about it. He pushed the tube into her hand and went on, ran diagnostics on everyone’s medical suites for good measure. Their suites were operating within proper perimeters.

“Waiting for orders.” He couldn’t keep the temper out of his voice, and he didn’t know why he bothered trying. So far this had been a Hell of mission. Living nightmare upon living nightmare.

Saying nothing, Shepard motioned them forward and the squad moved as one. Kaidan stepped over the body of a fallen mercenary, the white handprint symbol on the armor glaring at him. Who were they? He found himself wishing Shepard had chosen to bring Wrex along.

Then again, this mission had called for reconnaissance — something the krogan merc had very little patience for.

Still, Wrex would have enjoyed the dinosaur, Kaidan thought with mental shudder. He was certain, however, Wrex would have threatened bodily harm to everyone, especially Shepard, at the plunge off the side of the cliff. That had definitely been a rush.

Advancing into the corridor, a smudge of red marked their path to the final room where a sadist was at work. He wondered what they were going to find on the other side of the thick door. No way to know. No way to see.

“Unknown Subject took the scientist here,” Garrus said, pointed to blood splatter. He scanned the splatter with his omni-tool, then the smears on the floor. “Dr. Wayne’s DNA presence confirmed, Commander. Not sure how much will be left of him, though.”

“So much blood,” Liara murmured. She turned and looked at Shepard. “How many liters of blood does the human body hold?”

Shepard gave the figure. “This isn’t very much. Body shot, looks like.”

“I can reconstruct the assault based on blood splatter.” Garrus seemed to be at ease doing police work, but Shepard shook her head.

“No time now. Get digitals for your report. Reconstruct it once we get back to the _Normandy_.” She gestured to the security station on the door. “Alenko, find us eyes and ears. I want to know what’s going on in there.”

Kaidan tried to circumvent the security system, to find the eyes and ears into the room Shepard needed. “Unable to comply” was as far as he got before Garrus pointed out the blast marks from a carnage mortar.

“Well, shit.” No wonder the mercenaries hadn’t tried to use the surveillance system.

Kaidan watched his HUD. The lone hard-suit sig hadn’t moved from its place on the far side of the room. Another, weaker, life reading glowed blue. Beyond that, they didn’t have a clue as to what was happening on the other side of the door.

He looked over at Shepard, tried to see her eyes past her face plate, and saw the dark smudges of fatigue illuminated by the glow of her own HUD. The dark under her eyes told him what he already assumed: She hadn’t slept well the night before and this mission seemed to be killing her. But he knew this mission was just as much for her as it was to stop a deranged soul from murdering another.

“We’re going to have to go in without knowing what’s going on, Commander.”

“Fine. Open the door. Get in, secure the room, and secure Dr. Wayne. Get out.” Her voice was flat, emotionless as she stepped aside so Garrus could get the door. “Joker, tell the Fifth Fleet we need a ship for pick up.”

“Aye, aye, Commander. You’ll have Alliance boots on the ground in twenty minutes, ma’am.”

“Make sure there’s a medic with them.”

“Copy that.”

The minutes ticked away as Garrus’s omni-tool flared a cracking code. Kaidan let his mind wander. From the dark fatigue that had settled under Shepard’s eyes, he knew the Commander was anything but emotionless. Most of what happened on Akuze was classified. He swallowed. What little he did know of it was enough to give him the chills. Especially after what had happened on Edolus. Shepard, for the most part, seemed to have put the past behind her, though he knew it had taken a toll on her to do so. She had to fly a desk until she was fit for command again.

“Door’s jammed,” Garrus confirmed, his voice hissing in a whisper. Kaidan schooled his thoughts back to the priority at hand.

Shepard nodded. “Alright. Pressurize the corridor and that room—” she hooked a thumb back to the door on the opposite side of the long hallway— “then blow this door. I want everyone in there to stay alive. Mission priorities remain the same: Secure the room, secure Dr. Wayne. Question his captor.”

“On it.” Garrus got to work, omni-tool active, gloved claws flying over the GUI.

When the bunker’s VI confirmed pressurization, Williams hit the green interface of the other door and ducked inside, checking for unfriendlies. “Clear.”

Shepard began to set the charges around the target door. Kaidan, Garrus, and Liara fell back to Williams’ position, took cover to protect them from the blast.

“Thirty seconds,” Shepard said and fell back. Her armor brushed Kaidan’s when she took a knee next to him. She took off her helmet, dropped it at her feet. Her dark hair was slick with sweat. She looked tired and haunted; a frown, deep sun burn, and bloodshot eyes further marring her features. He wanted to say something, anything really, to lighten the mood.

“You picked such a romantic spot for our second date.” He roughened his voice with mock-lust as he looked into her eyes. With all the death around them, he didn’t know what it said about him that he stopped pretending to want her in the instant their eyes met. Did she know how sexy she looked with a sun burn highlighting her freckles? “Really puts me in the mood, Commander.”

Shepard rewarded him with a ghost of smile and a roll of her eyes while Williams snickered, “I’m all randy, too.”

“Williams, take point.”

“Gee thanks, Skipper.” The Chief’s frown was immediate. “Lord. What a nightmare.”

“If you spew in your helmet, you’ll never get the smell out” was all Shepard said. Williams and Liara took the advice and tossed their helmets down. Kaidan didn’t want to know what god-awful odors were on the other side of that door.  He left his helmet and breather plate in place.

The nightmare began as soon as the charges blew and the squad swept in to secure the room. Whatever Kaidan was expecting, whatever Cerberus was trying to cover up—

 “Mother of God.”

This wasn’t it.

“Goddess. No.”

What the Hell had they walked into?

He could only assume the broken and bloodied man strapped nude to what appeared to be an operating table was Dr. Wayne. His torturer, a thick and sturdy rock of a man in a battered yellow hard-suit, stood over him with what appeared to be a rescue knife. Blood splatter decorated the table and his hard-suit and pooled at his feet where his helmet lay. He wore a streak of red—more blood—across his cheek like a warrior of old.

One of Wayne’s arms looked like nothing more than a piece of meat. Kaidan nearly gagged at the sight of it, was thankful he hadn’t removed his helmet or breath plate. This much blood, the sour stench of death and body fluids— He mentally shivered and knew his sense of smell would definitely trigger a migraine after the fatigue of the intense battle. He focused on Wayne’s captor. 

He was mumbling, paced back and forth holding aloft the knife.  “I don’t have maw acid for you. No. No acid for you, Dr. Wayne. The screaming. Stop the screaming. I want to sleep, damn you. Damn you. You did this. The screaming. I want to _sleep_.”

Williams closed in on them, pistol out front and ready. “Drop the knife and step away.” Her voice was demanding, cold.

The man with the knife didn’t appear to notice, continued to mutter about wanting to sleep. His eyes were vacant and bloodshot as he sliced another piece of flesh off Wayne’s arm. Dr. Wayne moaned weakly. Blood splattered to the deck.

“I say again: Drop the knife and step away. Now.” She was closer, within the mercenary’s line of sight.

The mercenary turned, a pistol in his other hand and directed at Williams. His eyes were alight with insanity. “Stay back! I’ve got no grief with you!” He stared coldly at the mutilated man on the table. “All I want is this bastard!”

If the blood wasn’t staunched soon, Dr. Wayne would bleed out. They might have already been too late to do much good. “Please,” he said, voice frail, accented. “He’s a madman. Mr. Toombs, you’re insane. You need help.”

They had a name, now, Kaidan thought. Now they could—

Shepard gasped and froze, face paling, when Mr. Toombs whipped back towards Dr. Wayne in a rage.

“Shut up!” He raised the knife. “You don’t get to lie. You don’t…” Toombs trailed off, eyes wild, disbelieving, and Kaidan felt the world drop away. “Shepard? My god, Shepard, is that you?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> __  
> “And I looked, and behold a pale horse;  
>  And his name that sat on him was Death,  
> And Hell followed with him.”  
> \--Revelation; the Bible  
> 


	67. Survivor

"Commander?"

Shepard's quarters were dark. The low hum of electronics and the rumble of _Normandy_ 's engines greeted her. The pungent twang of human vomit lingered in the air. A flicker of apprehension skated through her, and nervously, Liara bit her lip. Shepard had called, omni-tool to omni-tool, right after she'd awoken from a nightmare, as she'd done many times before, seeking — what, the asari maiden didn't know. The Commander had simply reached out. To kindness, Liara suspected. To friendship. It warmed her heart to know Shepard sought her out.

The conversation had been brief, mostly apologetic on Shepard's behalf, but Liara thought she'd heard a thread of pain woven into the exhausted words. After all, no one had expected what had happened on Ontarom.

Least of all Commander Shepard herself.

Much like the girl on Arcturus, Corporal Toombs' eyes had been wild. Liara hadn't thought they would be able to calm him. She had been too frightened to hope. Shepard hadn't been able to calm the young girl on Arcturus. As much as she'd tried to talk her into calming down, it hadn't been enough. It had been horrible to watch such a young and fragile woman take her own life.

Watching Shepard's reaction to the failure had been worse. And her nightmares— Goddess. Such horror. Such blame. _Why are you normal?_ the girl had asked. _Why do you get to be normal?_ And those questions ate at the Commander. Shepard's dreams were vivid, surreal as her mind tried to cope with not only the incomplete Prothean warning imprinted onto her subconscious, but with the realities of war and loss.

And of love and camaraderie. Of accepting and being accepted.

" _Death. Loss. It's all getting too redundant," the Commander said before apologizing again for waking Liara and closing the link._

Liara took another step into Shepard's quarters allowing the door to close behind her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She studied Shepard's bed, a disarray of blankets and sheets pulled away from the mattress and toward the bathroom. Her heart caught, clinched tight. She vowed after touching Shepard's mind for the first time that she would do everything in her power to help Shepard rest easy so she could stop Saren. The Prothean visions were strong, twisted. Shepard was courageous, strong-willed. Some would say stubborn. A lesser mind would have faltered and failed.

"Commander Shepard?"

But the missions in between stopping Saren tested Commander Shepard's mettle.

Liara had never touched a human mind before Shepard. In fact, she had only ever touched her mother's when she was a child. Sharing her memories, her joy. She was unsure if it was a human trait or simply just Shepard herself, but Shepard had a tendency to dwell and re-think, _re-calculate_. She ran what-if scenarios, calculating the strengths and weaknesses of her enemies, her teammates—sometimes she used teammates she knew were dead in her scenarios. Knowing it would hurt. It reopened old wounds. _Dwelling. When she should leave well enough alone._

The door to Shepard's bathroom was closed. Liara rapped her knuckles lightly on the metal. "Shepard, are you in there?"

When the bathroom door opened and Shepard stepped out, Liara put a hand to her mouth in dismay.

"I think I'm going crazy," Shepard mumbled softly before Liara could say anything and weakly ran a hand through her dark hair. The tender skin under her eyes was smudged with fatigue. Her face where the harsh light of Ontarom's sun had burned her was peeling. Red vessels crisscrossed the whites of her eyes like a morbid spider's web.

"Shepard, let me help," Liara said as Shepard pushed passed her, paced.

"Help me go crazy? Sure. Why not?"

The jesting tone was light. And Liara knew Shepard was avoiding the issue. She knew the Commander didn't like her, as she put it, _poking around_ in her head. But Liara knew she could help if Shepard let her. Just knew it. If Shepard would only listen to her. She'd been able to help some with the nightmares from Arcturus.

"Such a smart ass, Shepard."

"Damn right."

Her bare feet slapped the floor. Liara tried hard not to stare at Shepard's slender, yet muscular legs or the tuck of her waist under her steel-gray tank. Or her breasts that bounced when she walked. Or her toned, ivory arms. Or the freckles on her shoulders, the back of her neck. Or her firm butt beneath high-cut panties the same color as her tank.

And Shepard thought _she_ was going crazy? _By the Goddess_.

Four times. That was how many times Shepard had allowed Liara to meld with her to make sense of her nightmares and the Prothean vision after the initial time. Twice for the girl on Arcturus. Liara wanted to help. Truly. It hurt to watch Shepard this way, looking so haunted. She wanted Shepard to be at her best.

Toombs. Toombs was one of Shepard's. Someone lost.

_Goddess._

Liara's heart turned in her chest. Even with Shepard's burned and peeling skin, her face was pale. Haunted, Liara thought again.

Fifteen times. That was how many times Liara had come to Shepard's quarters after a wake-up call. After the first wake-up call, Liara made sure Shepard was taking time for herself during the day. After the second wake-up call, Liara began to visit afterwards. To make sure Shepard was rested. Usually, Liara merely fixed tea or coffee and talked about nonsensical things — things other than the mission, thing other than what was bothering Shepard. But not tonight. Tonight, she was going to help Commander Shepard sort out her brain and her memories and show her how to keep from going out of her mind before the end of the mission. Damn it. Above all else, Shepard was her friend. She would do what she had to do to help her.

"It won't hurt." Truthfully, Liara had no idea if it would hurt, but she wasn't going to give up. "You'll feel better. You did before."

Shepard flopped into a chair at the conference table and put her head in her hands. "I'm tired, Liara. You should get some rest too." She squinted at the room's only clock. "We'll be into port in another hour or so. If we're lucky the refueling depot will have an actual restaurant and not some greasy spoon or titty bar."

"You'll be drinking again. So will your crew." Wincing at the accusation in her tone, Liara busied herself with the coffee machine. It was no concern of hers as to whether Shepard drank heavily in between missions. It appeared to be how most humans and many alien species coped.

"Command and alien crew are the only crew members I'm allowing a port call while we discharge."

"Your marines will be so disappointed."

Shepard shrugged. If she noted the sarcasm in Liara's tone, she didn't acknowledge it. "We can't risk an incident in the Terminus. Saren's out here somewhere. I know it. And with the Blood Pack attack on Fehl Prime diverting traffic from the Zeta Relay, we've had no choice but to divert to the Nubian Expanse. We're running silent longer, have to discharge sooner than expected, is all. The marines will just have to wait with the rest of the crew for a liberty once we make it back to Council Space."

"Was it a safe choice? To come out this way?"

"It's the only choice right now. One of the secondary relays in the Expanse will get us back to the Attican Traverse. We'll be back into Attican Beta within fifty hours, give or take."

She brought Shepard her coffee cup and offered a jar of lotion as well. Shepard eyed the jar with mistrust as she took her first sip of coffee. The way she was eying the jar, Liara thought perhaps the Commander expected it would detonate or ask her to dance.

"I don't do the beauty goo thing, Liara," she said. "And I don't look that bad." She combed a hand through her wild hair. It only stuck up more, the ends kinking and twirling. _Fascinating._ Human hair was so interesting. And Shepard's hair looked so soft… Liara wanted to comb her fingers through it too. She smothered the impulse with a forced chuckle.

"Your face is peeling like a snake, Calleigh. Isn't it uncomfortable?"

"Nope." She took another plug of her coffee, dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks as she closed her eyes with a sigh.

"Shepard, do you want to talk about it? About Ontarom?"

The response was immediate but silent. Shepard's shoulders tensed, her copper eyes became flat and unresponsive. She set the coffee cup down hard enough that she might have chipped it and glared. So much went through that glare before she could hide it behind anger. Hurt. Self-loathing. Fear.

Liara stifled a sigh. Shepard was going to let her in, damn it.

"He could have killed all of us if Kaidan hadn't reacted. If he hadn't used his biotics to thrust away Toombs and his grenade."

Liara sat as she pictured the scene on Ontarom in her mind, the frightening way the man, Corporal Toombs, had waved about his weapons — a pistol in one hand, a knife in the other. She shuddered as she recalled Toombs had seemed to accept Shepard's words.

" _I need to know what he knows," she insisted, firmly. "It's over, Toombs, but I need him. He needs to answer for his crimes and to answer my questions._ Our _questions._

" _It's over, Toombs," she repeated in a calm, smooth tone. "They can't hurt you anymore."_

_Toombs continued to stand there. Liara's heart ached for the three tortured souls in the room. Which, she wondered, was more tortured?_

_Then: "It's— it's really over?" He looked despondent. "Maybe the screaming will stop now. I don't know."_

_Shepard stepped forward, took the knife. She handed off the knife to Garrus and gestured to the others to secure the scientist. The Commander took Toombs' wrist, led him away from the man on the table. "All you can do is keep going. You get hit, you get back up, and you hit back. You keep going. No matter what."_

" _I hit back, Shepard." She was silent as he looked at her morosely. "I hit back hard."_

 _Kaidan radioed Joker for a medevac and never took his eyes off Toombs while he ran the trauma module from his omni-tool on Dr. Wayne. The human biotic didn't trust the man. Or maybe he was watching Shepard. Liara's heart hurt at the thought. She thought Shepard didn't have a clue as to Kaidan's true feelings. Just friends, family in arms, Shepard had said once when Liara had felt brave enough to ask. She had thought she sensed a thread of untruth in the Commander's voice. Kaidan didn't seem to be in any hurry to declare his undying passion for her. But the way they looked at each other sometimes… By the Goddess. Such love, caring. Understanding. It was there. It_ had _to be._

 _In a way, it was frustrating. Liara imagined a romantic interlude between the two humans. They_ had _to be passionately in love with each other._ Had _to be. They worked with each other every day. It should have been the romance of the ages with both declaring their love for the other and riding off in an air car made just for them._

_On the other hand, Liara was glad Shepard was totally oblivious to Kaidan. It meant she was still available for Liara's more lurid daydreams. She so wished the Commander would pay more attention to her. She wanted to be the one riding off in the air car with Shepard declaring her love and devotion. Asking for the bonding ceremony. Both wearing the gowns of the Devoted._

_Loving her and only her forever._

_Which was an incredibly foolish thought since Shepard was a member of such a short-lived species._

_But still._

_Shepard would look absolutely beautiful in a gown of the Devoted._

_Ashley nudged her. "Focus, T'Soni! He's going to bleed out."_

" _What? Oh!"_

Liara had a sense of relief once the madman had been placated, but the relief was short-lived. When Shepard had begun to question the scientist, Dr. Wayne, about Cerberus' activities, Toombs had become more violent, more deranged.

_Shepard stood between Toombs and the scientist. The metallic stench of blood hung in the air. The man was nearly gone. The medevac team would be there soon with the needed blood and liquids IVs. He just had to hold out a few more moments._

" _You think I don't want revenge for Akuze?" Shepard's angry shout made him blink, made Liara blink. Was that what Shepard wanted? Was that why they were here? Cerberus had killed an Alliance rear admiral as well as countless others. Was it revenge or justice? Did Shepard even know? The wildness of his eyes dimmed. Kaidan, Ashley, and Garrus stood rigid, weapons ready. Liara quaked in her boots. "Damn it, Toombs, if I'd seen you, I'd never left you behind. I saw you dragged under! I saw… so many dragged under."_

"I don't want to talk about it, Liara." Shepard's voice pulled Liara back to the present.

She raised her eyes to find her watching her. Copper eyes ringed with pale green shimmered in the dim light. "Well, I do," she answered quickly over her choking, beating heart. "I was terrified, all right? And that poor man… the scientist. No matter that he's with Cerberus. Toombs had no right… Not like that." Liara closed her eyes briefly seeing the raw and bleeding flesh of the scientist's arm, smelling the metallic scent of blood, hearing the man's painful moans. Her stomach lurched.

Shepard's expression softened and she reached across the table to clasp Liara's hand. Her fingers were calloused, her palm rough. The grip was strong, warm. Protective.

Dipping her head slightly, she said, "I'm sorry." The pad of her thumb caressed the back of Liara's hand. "I'm sorry you were dragged into this mess."

"That was my mother's fault." It hurt to admit it. "I keep hoping that she's innocent, but…" She shook her head. "I will do what it takes to help you stop her and Saren. I've told you that before. Those data disks we've found. There is some useful information on them. Not much. They're so fragile. Most of the data is corroded. But—"

"I trust you, Liara."

She smiled, warmed at the thought. "Thank you, Shepard."

She watched as the Commander took a calming breath and gave her permission to meld. As an afterthought, Shepard raised her omni-tool toward the door to her quarters, the locking mechanism flicking the haptic adaptive interface from green to red.

Liara reached out with her senses, using her mind and not her entire nervous system. Instantly she was transported to a realm of blood and pain and loss. She was ankle deep in a torrent of red blood. Decay and rot assaulted her, blown at her on rough, cold winds. Thresher Maws and beasts with multiple eyes and gnashing teeth bit at her. Creatures with no names and gore in their mouths hissed and snarled. Writhing bodies screamed for help. Cries of "Shepard!" echoed across the mindscape. She calmed her nerves and edged through the memories twisted by agony, picking her way slowly. One couldn't run within the mind. And here, in Shepard's mind, riding an air bike to reach her destination was probably a bad idea.

She followed the river of blood to a patch of trees. Mists shrouded them. Ghosts moaned. Toombs voice, louder than the others, accused Commander Shepard of abandoning him. Liara shut her eyes and said nothing, only trudged along, shivering as the temperature dropped. She wore only a thin tank top and loose, wide pants. Her feet were bare and the red blood from the river coated them.

The trees parted and Liara looked out at the bleak landscape. Twin suns—one gold, one deep orange—lay low on the horizon, Mindoir's close binary pair. A sea of blood as far as the eye could see lapped at a shore made of bones and crushed bodies. Blank-eyed stares and open mouths stared up at her. Such anguish. Her heart wept for Shepard. A geth trooper smashed one of the skulls—it looked like Ashley—with its sidearm before disappearing, and more blood flowed into the sea. Liara shut her eyes momentarily blocking the visions but careful not to complete the bond between them, turn it into something sexual in order to block the more powerful images of Shepard's subconscious. She'd made that mistake the first time. To bring pleasure against the pain. Shepard hadn't asked for pleasure, just consented for comfort. She was here to help.

Goddess, such pain. Such misery.

The bones of the shore dug into her feet painfully. She walked along the shore, waiting. In the distance a bomb went off, shaking the ground, a mushroom cloud formed on the darkening horizon. Shrieks of the dying bellowed on the wind.

"Come out, Shepard." She kept her voice even, calm.

Shepard, as a sixteen-year-old girl —Calleigh — appeared some distance away. She walked calmly along the shore. Her dark wavy hair was long, parted in the middle, and uncombed. It brushed her shoulders like a dark waterfall and fell down her back. She was unaffected by the harsh wind. The hair remained still as the wind picked up its pace and blew at Liara hard enough to nearly knock her over. Pieces of bone and flesh scored Liara's bare arms and legs.

Liara wondered, not for the first time, if this child who walked along the beach unaffected by the wind or the red waves was the young Shepard, the Calleigh who survived the batarian raid on Mindoir. The child Commander Shepard did her best to protect, to fight for. To defend. The one she tried desperately to shelter from the horrors of war.

As she neared, Liara could see Calleigh had a black eye, busted lips, and a bloody nose. She didn't know what to make of the girl's appearance. There were bruises on her chin, a scuffed knee, broken fingers. She was armored though. The girl looked like she'd been in the fight of her life but didn't seem to feel the pain from her injuries. She needn't. The pain was in the very air. It lanced off Liara's exposed skin, chilled her to the bone, and made her heart ache.

"You're wearing your armor," Liara noted when the child reached her. The armor looked old. Worn in places, it was missing sections. Where a piece was gone, there was a long, painful-looking scratch or bloody puncture wound. There were green fuzzy shoes on her feet. The shoes had huge goggling eyes and big grins. And they were smiling crazy smiles directly at Liara. Of everything in Shepard's mind, those shoes scared Liara the most.

Calleigh smiled proudly, cracked and bleeding lips stretching. She was missing a few teeth on top and one on the bottom. "Well. Yeah. I'm Commander Fucking Shepard." Her breath whistled through her missing teeth, giving her a lisp.

Liara's heart swelled, relieved. _Thank the Goddess._ Shepard's natural stubbornness had built the armor in her mind once she'd been shown how. She was going to be okay. They just had to practice more to build up it further, to make it stronger. Perhaps the child's injuries could be healed as well. Were they the injuries Shepard received on Mindoir? she wondered. Or did her mind injure this figment this way? Was it purposeful? And what was the purpose?

"Now to show you the proper way to compartmentalize, Commander Shepard." She chose a spot on the blood-soaked shore and sat cross-legged. Bones crunched beneath her weight. Miniature flying thresher maws zipped around them. Their tails glowed like lightning bugs winking on and off.

"Meditation has never really worked for me," Calleigh said, flicking one of the lightning thresher maws with a forefinger and thumb that looked broken. But she sat cross-legged as well, resting an elbow on her padded knee, chin in her hand—the glove was fingerless and exposed dried blood around the edges of her broken fingernails.

"That is because you have the patience of an obese space cow that hasn't eaten in days."

Raising her chin, the armored girl assumed all the dignity she could muster looking as scuffed and battered as she did and said, "You've been waiting to use that one, T'Soni."

"Well. Yes." She tilted her head to the side. "Are you ready, Commander Shepard?"

"Let's do it."

"First," Liara began and pointed to the green fuzzy shoes. She was certain they were staring at her, pinning her with their unsettling grins. "Shepard, _what_ are those?"

"Oh. Just some green froggy slippers my mom gave me when I was sixteen."

"I see." She didn't. Not at all. What was a _froggy_? "Are those… eyes?" And were they staring at her?

Amusement flickered in the eyes, copper with dark green flecks and ringed with pale green, that met hers. Her sense of humor took over and Calleigh answered by sticking out a thin leg and giving a shake of a fuzzy green foot. The froggy eyes circled around and darted to and fro, but its disturbing grin never wavered. She broke into an open and friendly, yet snaggletoothed smile letting loose a peal of laughter. "I'd totally wear these bad boys 'round the ship if I weren't so… so stuffy and CO-ish. And if they hadn't been, like, destroyed on Mindoir and stuff." She shook her foot again, goofy smile still plastered on her face. "Aren't they frigid? Like, totally arctic?"

Liara shuddered. They _were_ staring at her. But Calleigh's smile and laughter were contagious. This was the side Shepard was protecting. This child. The humor, the joy of living. Carefree. Battered, beaten, but not broken. "Totally arctic, Shepard," she forced herself to agree.

" _All you can do is keep going," Shepard had told Toombs. "You get hit, you get back up, and you hit back."_ And that's exactly what Liara was going to help Shepard do.

* * *

Outside the door, Kaidan's heart twisted as he dropped his hand. The door locked him out just before he could knock. Liara was in there. He'd watched her enter only moments ago.

In there. With Shepard. With the door locked. Ice spread through him. He didn't want to think about it. He wasn't going to think about it. His chest felt tight.

Sighing he walked back to the galley and poured the cup of coffee he had prepared for Shepard into the sink and dropped the paper cup into the recycler. Emotion swamped him like a wild thing, stabbing his heart. Chin to his chest, he gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles turning white. How had he let this happen? Had he let his emotions get the better of him? His thoughts turned to BAaT, to Rahna. His heart stuttered. Was his life on repeat?

If he hadn't reacted on Ontarom, they all would have died. Shepard knew that. Surely to God she knew that. And why hadn't Shepard frisked Toombs? Why hadn't she cuffed the bastard? His thoughts filtered back to Ontarom, to the last few moments of the mission before the Alliance drop ship had arrived.

" _The vids say you were the sole survivor of what happened at Akuze." The tremor in Toombs' voice had alarms going off in Kaidan's head._ Shit! _"Who am I to argue?"_

" _Toombs. Don't!" Shepard's plea fell on deaf ears._

_Kaidan didn't hesitate. He tackled Shepard as he used his most powerful throwing mnemonic. Toombs' body and the Mark 14 grenade flew through the open door and down the corridor. The blast only seconds later rumbled the ground, plumes of fire and smoke shooting into the room. He clutched Shepard to his chest, protecting her head._

_When it was over, Kaidan lifted to his elbows, inspecting Shepard for injuries as she coughed, and stared into her eyes. She looked ethereal, unreal in the dim red flashing lights and choking smoke. Her hair was disheveled, a dark aura of choppy waves encircling her head. For a brief moment, it was only them. His mouth went bone dry. He reached up with trembling fingers to remove his faceplate, to bring their faces closer together. He wanted her hot against his mouth._

_The bunker's emergency VI kicked in and foam began raining down to squelch the flames. The gray foam splattered them, the moment gone. Kaidan's fingers stilled on his helmet._ Hell. _He took a breath, unsure if he felt relieved or angry he'd been interrupted, and looked around. Garrus picked himself off Liara and helped her up. Ashley had shielded the scientist's body with her own as best she could. Now she rubbed at the goo spraying her armor, gave her fingers a delicate sniff. Her nose wrinkled in disgust._

" _Ugh. What is this stuff?" she wanted to know. "Bird shit?"_

" _Tango down?" Shepard asked quietly, blinking away the smoke. Her voice brought his attention back to her face. Hurt lay naked in her copper eyes._

_He nodded, made no effort to move but to gently wipe the moisture from her face. "Negative contacts, Commander."_

_Had she expected him to react to the threat differently? Why hadn't she restrained the madman? Why hadn't she ordered Garrus to restrain him? How come Garrus hadn't done it without being ordered? Why was he questioning his commanding officer?_

_She wet her parched lips. "What about the Cerberus scientist?"_

" _Alive, ma'am," Ashley reported. "Barely. Enough to get answers eventually. But he's out cold. If medevac doesn't get here, he's not going to make it."_

" _Corporal Toombs was a good man," the Commander told them later at the debriefing._

" _Corporal Toombs died on Akuze, Shepard," Kaidan replied, foregoing her title. If anyone present noticed the slip, they said nothing. Not even Shepard. "He was given a burial with full honors. Just like all the others. It's… over, ma'am."_

_Shepard only nodded with a taut jerk of her head, looked haunted and pale beneath her sunburn._

The whirring of a sleeper pod caught Kaidan's attention and he pulled himself from the memories, straightened. He did what he had to do, damn it. And he would do it again.

 _Keep going._ Not only was a Special Forces motto, but it was Shepard's personal motto too. She'd survived a hell of a lot just by doing it.

" _All you can do is keep going. You get hit, you get back up, and you hit back. You_ keep going _. No matter what."_

He vowed he would do just that. Commander Shepard was going to live, and she was going to bring Cerberus and Saren to justice. They were both galactic threats. If the Commander only saw him as her friend, one of her crew, then… God that hurt to think about. He swallowed. One step at a time. He'd make sure she lived. That's all he could do right now. He couldn't— _wouldn't_ —think about her and Liara.

He looked at the time and heard the familiar rhythmic slap of socks on the other side of the bulkhead. Needing anything to take his mind off things, he poured a cup of coffee, sweetened it with artificial sugar and added powdered creamer. When Ashley rounded the corner in a steel-gray tank top, matching sweats, and hot pink fuzzy house slippers with yellow antennae and green owl eyes, he forced a smile and held out the fresh cup of coffee. Her hair was sleep-tossed and spiked in directions it was never meant to go. There were creases in her cheek and on her arms from sleeping hard. _Rack burn._ At least someone slept well.

"Morning, Chief."

Tilting her head to one side, she stole a slanted look at him before she gave her usual good-morning grunt in response. Then she dove for the coffee like a dying woman in the desert as she sought her first dregs of caffeine goodness. He crossed his arms and leaned a hip on the counter to study her. After the first two gulps, she was nearly human again and raked fingers through her hair to prove it before opening cabinets on the hunt for chow.

"How's the Commander, El-tee?" she asked as she inspected her choices for breakfast. Rye toast of questionable origin with fake strawberry jam that had the consistency of chunky boogers or fake sausage and fake eggs with a fake rice-cake that was really cardboard in disguise and fake grape jelly that had the consistency of semen. Oh. _Yum_. "The breakfast of champions, right there," she murmured as she set the two packages on the counter and gave both of them the beady eyeball over her coffee cup.

"Liara's with her." He hadn't meant to blurt it out. It wasn't anyone's business who the Commander was with, let alone Gunnery Chief Williams.

Ashley turned and gave him a critical squint. "Does that idea bother you as much as it bothers me? Jeeze. She could be programming the Commander to accept her mother or Saren or the geth for all we know."

He really didn't want to go into it and found himself, much to his revulsion, defending the asari maiden. They'd gone through drills and fought beside Liara for months now. The woman was there to help in the fight against Saren and the geth. "If Liara can help her… The Prothean device did a number on her, Ash. So did the Prothean Cipher. And what with that vigilante on Ontarom…"

"Corporal Toombs—"

"Died on Akuze, Chief. I stand by that. Who we met wasn't the man Shepard served with. The vigilante on Ontarom was a madman who ultimately disgraced his uniform. What Cerberus did to him was—"

"Gross."

"Monstrous."

"Yeah, okay. That too. And if you hadn't been there, we'd all be blown to Kingdom Come." She tapped a slender finger on her chin thoughtfully. "Except T'Soni. She'd be fried calamari or something." She shrugged, resumed her hunt through the cabinets for food.

"Be nice, Chief."

Her mouth twisted wryly. "Can't, sir. Nice begins after O'Dark Hundred. And I haven't had nearly enough caffeine yet. Even if you did fix it perfectly. Thanks."

She held up the jam and jelly packets. "Looks like someone ate all the good fake stuff. So what'll it be, Alenko? Strawberry-flavored snot on questionable rye or grape-flavored spunk on dry cardboard this morning?"

Despite himself and his dark mood, the edges of his mouth threatened a foolish grin. It had to be her crazy houseshoes. Maybe it was the dimple in her cheek. It definitely wasn't the chow.

"Eggs, sausage and dry cardboard, Williams," he said. "Hold the grape-flavored spunk."

"You should live a little," Ashley teased with a bemused smile on her lips. She elbowed him in the ribs playfully. "Try the spunk, El-tee. It'll soften up the cardboard."

 


	68. It's So Fluffy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thank you, everyone who has been following and waiting (probably impatiently) for the update. I make no excuses for the amount of time it's taken me to get this chapter up. I'm sorry you had to wait so long. I wrote myself into a hole with the last chapter and almost gave up the rest of the story. It's taken this long to figure out how to get out of said hole. I give you fluff to make up for such a long wait. :)_
> 
> _Also, since I do not have internet at home and I have not had it for a year, I have not been able to download and play the three ME3 DLCs: Leviathan, Omega and Citadel. (Nor have I spoiled myself… too much…) Hopefully, I haven't completely curb-stomped actual canon with this Chapter. I have not been able to do as much research as I usually do when writing a chapter since I've only been going to the Library for online access once or twice a month._

Water beat down on the back of Shepard's neck, relieving the tension there. Soap slicked and feeling more rested than she'd been in days, Shepard turned her face into the shower's spray and let the water finish its job. Between Liara's help with asari compartmentalization techniques and Alenko's adamant insistence that the Corporal Toombs Shepard knew died on Akuze and not Ontarom, Shepard was feeling much better about the situation. She knew it would be yet a while before truly healing but for now she could at least set it aside and concentrate on the mission at hand. After all, both her friends were right: The situation on Ontarom had been essentially screwed from the onset. Bad luck, worse timing, and the unpredictability of a madman had precluded any certainty in the outcome. And that was just _inside_ the base.

_Damned Space Cow._

_Damned dinosaur._

_Damned everything._

The only certainty: the Alliance had the scientist, and he was alive and undergoing treatment to repair his tortured body. That was what she concentrated on. Alliance Intelligence was sorting out what the Cerberus group was and what they were up to, and _Normandy_ was on course for a secret Cerberus base to get more information with instructions from FLEETCOM to raid the base and take any prisoners. Not that Shepard was looking forward to finding what other experiments Cerberus was doing, but she was going to stop them. She had to. Cerberus was a galactic menace.

Shepard sighed and turned off the shower, grabbing a towel.

"How about better luck next time?" she asked out loud, mostly into the towel as she blotted her face. "Just a little bit better? A hint of good luck?"

She gave a mirthless, depreciative chuckle as she toweled off and dressed, foregoing boots–she was off duty and wouldn't have the watch for another seven hours. She combed her hair and studied her reflection in the mirror. The peeling from her fight with sunlight was all but gone, but the only "tan" she'd received was in the form of a few extra freckles across her nose and forehead she didn't recall having prior to getting sunburned. Her face was pale as ever.

Freckles. Of all the complexions she could have had…

_Thanks, Mom._

Her bemused thoughts tapered off as she stepped out of her private head. Alenko was waiting at the conference table in her quarters, his face shadowed by the dim light of her cabin, and she was silently thankful she had had the foresight to bring her uniform into the head with her. She usually left it neatly folded on her bed.

_Huh. Luck's improving after all._

"Do you have some time to talk now, Commander?" he asked, standing. "I, uh, made some coffee, ma'am." He offered a mug.

The grin that had been forming on Shepard's face faded at his tone. She sat at the table, accepted the steaming cup, and inclined her head as the Lieutenant sat back down. "What's wrong?"

He waited until she'd taken a sip before answering. Or rather, not really answering.

"I'm…" He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Nothing's wrong, ma'am." He toyed with a datapad on the table.

Shepard cocked a brow at him, reprovingly. She ticked off her fingers as she ran through the things she felt were "wrong".

"One, there's an army of geth under the control of a rogue Spectre looking for (two) a Prothean Conduit of some kind to bring back a race of sentient machines to kill all organic life, and (three) we took a detour to deal with something traumatic from my past. Four, now it's time to take down a black ops group—also rogue—that's conducting illegal and unethical experimentation in what appears to be a quest to build super soldiers for some as of yet determined cause. There's also a good possibility that said rogue black ops group has a connection to someone from both our pasts.

"Five things, right? Six, if you squint. And _nothing_ 's wrong?" In dismissal, she put the coffee mug to her lips and blew to cool it.

He gave a sheepish smile. "Well, when you put it that way…" Trailing off, he handed over the datapad. "Speaking of the rogue Spectre: That Helena Blake woman forwarded this information to us."

Shepard made a show of looking at the datapad but didn't really see it. Worried about his disposition, she asked instead, "What's really bothering you, Kaidan? Speak freely."

"I'm worried about us," he admitted quietly. " _You_ ," he corrected quickly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "Ma'am."

When she looked up from the datapad he held up his hands as if to fend her off. "I don't want to step on anyone's toes though."

Puzzled, Shepard blinked at him. She sipped her coffee waiting for him elaborate. When he didn't and the silence began to get awkward, she tried to come up with something to say to him.

"Want to run that by me again?" She couldn't keep the puzzlement out of her voice.

To her astonishment, the tips of Alenko's ears turned an interesting shade of red. He stammered, looking quite like a fish without water. Shepard could only blink in bafflement at him. Had she just pissed him off or embarrassed the hell out of him?

To the Lieutenant's credit, he had an incredible poker face. In the months they'd been serving together, she couldn't read him as well as she'd wanted to. He'd been pissed at her—or at least the situation—when he'd learned his childhood girlfriend had died after attacking a group of civilians.

Hell, she was _still_ pissed at that particular event in her life. The way Internal Affairs had handled the situation was FUBAR'd from the beginning. (Such was politics, in Shepard's humble opinion. …Said opinion not really being humble _at all_.) But Shepard couldn't recall his ears turning red when he'd snapped at her in a fit of temper when he'd all but snatched away the Internal Affairs report concerning the civilian and Marine casualties suffered by one Lieutenant Susan Jones AKA Ms. Mihaljević and retreated to his cabin. This was new.

And… _cute_ , her hormones added unhelpfully.

"Dr. T'Soni, ma'am," he managed finally. He didn't sound angry—in point of fact, Lieutenant Alenko sounded like he wanted to be anywhere but sitting across from her—so Shepard assumed the ears thing was due to embarrassment. But what he'd said didn't compute. What did Liara have to do with anything?

"What about Liara?"

" _You_ and Dr. T'Soni," he said. He looked like he'd swallowed something foul-tasting. Turnips, probably.

"Do what, now?"

Alenko shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. What followed Shepard had trouble comprehending: "I, uh, like… I-I mean, I wanted to talk about… That is… if you're a… Uh, if you prefer Dr. T'Soni—Dr. T'Soni's company, that is—then I can go."

Shepard couldn't keep the confusion off her face.

He scrambled to his feet. "I should go, Shepard. Commander. Ma'am." And although he looked like he was about to leave without it: "Uh, with your permission, ma'am."

Shepard stood and eyed him uncertainly. What the hell was going on? Alenko was… awkward around her at times, but…

_Wait._

Wait a minute.

Did Alenko believe that she and Liara were…?

_Oh, Hell._

Did the crew?

_Probably._

Well, shit. Did _Liara_?

_Oh, damn it._

If it weren't happening to me, it'd be funny, she thought morosely.

"Lieutenant," she said, a smile of dark humor touching her lips, "cross my heart, hope to die: _What_ are you talking about?"

It was his turn to blink at her. Then his shoulders relaxed a bit—only enough to draw Shepard's attention to their broadness. She gestured for him to sit to take her mind off his shoulders. No good would come to thinking about Alenko's features. She was sure of it.

He didn't sit back down until she did. And when he sat, his posture was rigid. Then he tried to speak again. "Dr. T'Soni, ma'am… Uh, there's a lower deck rumor that she's interested in you as more than a Prothean resource," he said at length, and Shepard had to struggle to keep her mouth from gaping open. "I've… I've got some downtime and wanted to spend it with you… er, wanted to _talk_ to you, ma'am, but if the rumor's true, I didn't…" He broke off releasing a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair. The curly ends stuck up in various directions. Shepard wondered absently if his hair felt as soft as it looked, and held onto her coffee mug with both hands lest she be tempted into reaching out and smoothing it down.

"Hell, Shepard," he said finally, staring into her eyes. "I _like_ being around you. Spending time with you. If there's something between you and Liara, I won't intrude. I just… need to know."

Shepard swallowed. He hadn't pressed this subject since Czarnobóg, and at the time she'd thought he would change his mind because of the IA report. And that was before she knew anything about a rumor of Liara being interested – though, now that she thought about it, Liara did seem to have a crush on her. Which was both very flattering and very weird.

Mostly just very weird.

And what about Williams? Had she imagined things? The last thing Shepard wanted was to be played by someone she was attracted to. She saw Kaidan as not only her Marine detail commander, but her friend as well.

And then there were the Regs. There was no Regulation against friendship among crewmates, but… what the Lieutenant was implying… She'd broken Regs before and what had begun as an intense relationship had eventually sputtered out.

Sputtered? Hell, it'd exploded in spectacular fashion with both parties hating the other. Her heart still held the scars.

She was tempted on two sides. One, deny anything was between the young Prothean expert and herself and say to hell with the Regs. Two, affirm a relationship between Liara and herself and say to hell with breaking the Regs.

What she really wanted… would change everything between them. Did she deny or affirm?

"I…I'm out of line," he said when she remained quiet. "Aren't I?"

He looked away, and Shepard watched him thoughtfully, replaying his stammered words in her mind. There was something in his demeanor that troubled her. She glanced at the datapad again, wondering if that… No, she decided. That was his excuse. He seemed to have to have an excuse to talk to her since Czarnobóg. Possibly even before, if she guessed his feelings correctly. If there was nothing between him and Ash.

Shepard suspected the last mission had taken its toll on the entire ground team. Alenko had done his job and saved them. Because she'd been unable to. She'd frozen up. Not since Akuze and the six months of Admin had she…

"This isn't about Liara, is it?" she asked, choosing her words carefully. She tapped the datapad with a thin finger. "Or this. You need an ear. I have two, you know. There's a little black rain cloud around your head."

"I'll try to keep the deck dry," he remarked drily after taking a sip of his coffee and setting the cup back on the table. "I had the data Blake sent us, so there it is. But… Shepard. Ontarom was rough. On all of us. I… just want to make sure you're okay."

And there it was. The problem. If Alenko doubted her command, then most of the crew probably felt that way as well. Shepard swallowed. She'd never expected being the Executive Officer of the most state-of-the-art frigate in the Fleet would lead to her becoming _Normandy_ 's Commanding Officer. At least not in the way everything had gone down.

"I'm better," Shepard told him honestly. She studied him. "But you aren't. What's on your mind, Kaidan?"

He stared at his coffee mug, an intense expression on his face. Shepard's hands felt clammy, her mouth dry. "Ontarom brought up some—" he hesitated, expelled a breath. Shepard tensed as if awaiting a blow to the gut. "—memories of my own."

Her heart cinched and Shepard felt both relief and humiliation. This had nothing to do with her. Feeling foolish at her self-consciousness, she took a sip of coffee and schooled her features into neutrality. Mentally chastising herself, she racked her brain for a possible explanation. Memories?

"Jump Zero?" she guessed.

He nodded, shrugged. "Don't know why. You did the best you could under the circumstances."

"And you didn't?"

He shrugged again, turned the mug around on the table. He didn't meet her gaze. "I… took that madman down the same way I did… Vyrnuus. With biotics and without… without _thinking_."

Puzzled, Shepard cocked her head to the side. "I don't understand."

"Rahna," he began but stopped and shut his eyes. Briefly, Shepard's heart squeezed at the name. Rahna Mihaljević. She'd known the woman as Lieutenant Susan Jones. The girl Kaidan Alenko had loved died by Shepard's biotics after she'd betrayed the team and killed six innocent civilians using powerful biotics. Biotics she shouldn't have been able to use given the L3R configuration implanted into her skull.

"Vyrnuus broke Rahna's arm," Alenko said, opening his eyes. He stared past Shepard. "She reached for a glass of water instead of pulling biotically. She just wanted a drink, you know?" He rested his chin in his large hand, looked over at Shepard sadly. "So I stood up. I didn't know what I was going to do. Just… something."

"Get your knuckles wrapped a few times, Lieutenant?" She wondered how many of Kaidan's bones Vyrnuus had broken for speaking up for his girlfriend. The fight couldn't have been pretty.

"I killed him, Shepard," he admitted. Shepard's brows rose in surprise, her heart going out to his lost innocence. "Snapped his neck. They could have saved him if they'd gotten to him fast enough, but… they didn't.

"Everyone had been so afraid of him. Especially Rahna. After that… After that she was scared of me too. Of biotics in general. Conatix shut down after that. They shipped him home quietly and… and I went home too.

"God, I hated that turian. But he wasn't really a _turian_ to me, you know? He was just Vyrnuus. But I never meant to kill him."

He met Shepard's gaze evenly. "On Ontarom, the only thing that mattered to me was getting that man away from you. I didn't even think. I just… _reacted_. Like with Vyrnuus."

Shepard reached across the table and rubbed the back of his hand with her knuckles. "I never doubted you for a moment, Kaidan." She paused, looked at him with new eyes. "That's why you're so in control, isn't it? Because of what happened. You were, what, seventeen?"

"I've got no more control than any other biotic," he said, looking uncomfortable. He straightened and put his hands in his lap.

She felt an acute loss at his withdrawal and mentally chastised herself for it, but she gave an unladylike snort, continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened, wrapping her fingers back around her mug. "You've got a hell of a lot more control than I do, Kaidan. If I can't shoot it, smack it with biotics, or beat it up, I blow it up."

He shrugged, a small smile on his lips. "Your methods get results. You do bludgeon things pretty hard, Shepard. 'Sides, I'm older than you are anyway."

"By what, two years? I think I've put in more miles on my biotics than you have, Lieutenant."

"It's three years, Commander."

"Same thing."

He regarded her with a shake of his head. "Your math skills need a little work, Shepard."

She grinned at him from behind her coffee mug.

"Feel better?" she asked after she took a sip.

He nodded then considered her with a speculative eye. "So, are we good?"

"There was never any question, Kaidan," she told him immediately, and he expelled a breath like he'd been holding it.

They drank their coffee in a comfortable silence for a moment. Shepard took the time to study him, chin in hand, elbow on the table. She replayed his words and his actions over the last several months. A thought occurred to her.

"Jump Zero doesn't bother you because of Vyrnuus and his death," she said watching his face. "Not really. It bothers you because Rahna spurned you after you stood up for her."

"No, that's—" he began then stopped and thought it over. "Well. Maybe you have a point. Maybe." He frowned at her and drained his mug, wiped his mouth with a quick swipe with the back of his hand. "But it's damned embarrassing you had to point that out to me."

"Sometimes it takes a third party looking in," she told him gently. She picked up the datapad with the information from Helena Blake. "Speaking of third party."

"You aren't going to like it," he warned.

She read over the data, a frown forming on her face as she read. "You were right," she said when she'd finished. "I didn't like it."

She contacted the bridge. Pressly's face appeared on her terminal. She hadn't realized he was on watch. She'd been expecting Joker.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Set course for Noveria, Exec, and then get a message off to Admiral Hackett. 'Re: Cerberus. The _Normandy_ has to make a detour. Possible geth sighting in the Horse Head Nebula, Pax System. We're going to investigate and will be late to the Cerberus base raiding party. Happy hunting if we can't make it back in time.'"

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"What do you think the Admiral will say to that?" Alenko asked after she'd signed off.

"Hopefully, 'Good luck,'" she grumbled. "If this turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'm going to throttle Helena Blake and bomb her base from orbit out of spite."

"Joker would be so happy, Commander."

Shepard grunted unhappily. "He would be, wouldn't he?"

"Sadistic bastard, our pilot."

Shepard finished her coffee and looked at him. She recalled something he said earlier. "You said you wanted to spend time with me." It wasn't a question, but neither was it an accusation. She kept her face calm, though her pulse skipped beats.

Alenko looked away, took a breath. "Yeah, Shepard. Yeah, I did." He looked back at her. "I was out of line. The chain of command is complicated enough without me tripping things up. It's just… you're special, you know? I've never met anyone like you."

"'Special', huh?" She shook her head, a small smile stretching her lips. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Kaidan was one of her lieutenants. Swallowing hard, she reached across the table, her hand coming to rest next to his.

He sighed and took her hand. Her heart gave a kick at his touch. His hand was warm, soft in places, worn in others from half a lifetime using hardsuits. "No going back now, is there?"

"Nope. Besides, you owe me a third date, Lieutenant."

He gave a short laugh of surprise. "I think I can come up with something special… Calleigh."


End file.
